Tell me your HS Senior is not ready for college, with saying your HS student is not ready for colleg

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ll go first: My rising HS Senior is spending more time on X-box this summer than writing his common application personal essay and getting his activities list in order. My hair and face is turning blue trying to encourage him to have a good draft - 1.5 hours a day - so senior year can be a little less stressful & so he can focus on strong grades senior year. Whelp .. I’m backing off. Who’s next?

My kid was a super procrastinator on all things college. And she really wanted to go! And had her sights set on a super selective spot. But she did nothing over the summer. And if I had tried to enforce “an hour and a half a day work on your essay“ it would have been a miserable failure. And she spent her senior year abroad on the other side of the planet. And she was in a really terrible host family situation through the end of October which is when her application for her most desired spot was due. And you know what? She got it done. And it was excellent. But it was only excellent because it was on her timeline and was her own voice and process. Trust your kid. I really do believe they will figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why we hired a consultant for our son four years ago to help with applications. He had to be accountable to someone, and we don't have to nag. School counselors don't have the same impact. We probably won't need to do this for our much younger daughter. Boys' frontal lobes develop at a slower pace. As a rising college senior now, he is just now showing real signs of maturity. Academically he has always been fine...I am talking about taking initiative to plan ahead, save money, etc. FWIW, he got into a top 20.

Okay. Tell me you are wealthy without telling me you’re wealthy.

Not the PP, but the one above. Our essay consultant cost hmmm maybe $600 for two kids? Pretty sure that doens't define us as wealthy. We spent zero on test prep btw.

[Anonymous]

My rising college freshman did all the essays on his own timeline after school started. He got all the applications in on time and was not stressed about it. Your child is not you. They know what needs to get done. Let him do it.

Do I wish he had followed a different process like I would have at his age? Sure. But I'm not him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ll go first: My rising HS Senior is spending more time on X-box this summer than writing his common application personal essay and getting his activities list in order. My hair and face is turning blue trying to encourage him to have a good draft - 1.5 hours a day - so senior year can be a little less stressful & so he can focus on strong grades senior year. Whelp .. I’m backing off. Who’s next?

yea, this is not funny or relatable to normal people...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll go first: My rising HS Senior is spending more time on X-box this summer than writing his common application personal essay and getting his activities list in order. My hair and face is turning blue trying to encourage him to have a good draft - 1.5 hours a day - so senior year can be a little less stressful & so he can focus on strong grades senior year. Whelp .. I’m backing off. Who’s next?

yea, this is not funny or relatable to normal people...

Really? This sounds totally normal. We parents know the downsides of procrastination and hope we can help our kids avoid it better than we did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back off, mom. There’s plenty of time to do this when school starts back up, and the school counselors will help him through it. There’s no reason to be obsessing over this at this point.

Counselors will not help. Offer incentives to him over the summer to get it done. Too stressful to do once school starts.

Best $3K I spent was on a private college counselor starting Jan of junior year. This meant the counselor was the one nagging my kid to get the essay(s) done over the summer and I barely had to do any nagging. The common app general essay was 99% done by mid-August and the extra essays for 75% of their schools were 50% done by mid-Sept. Made for a much easier fall of senior year when I knew they'd be extremely busy with school and sports.
Much easier to have someone else other than Mom/Dad setting deadlines. This meant by mid-Oct 90% of things were finished and submitted. By mid Nov everything except 2 schools (with Jan 1/5 deadlines for RD) were completed and those 2 sets of supplemental essays were into their 2nd/3rd drafts already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back off, mom. There’s plenty of time to do this when school starts back up, and the school counselors will help him through it. There’s no reason to be obsessing over this at this point.

Counselors will not help. Offer incentives to him over the summer to get it done. Too stressful to do once school starts.

Best $3K I spent was on a private college counselor starting Jan of junior year. This meant the counselor was the one nagging my kid to get the essay(s) done over the summer and I barely had to do any nagging. The common app general essay was 99% done by mid-August and the extra essays for 75% of their schools were 50% done by mid-Sept. Made for a much easier fall of senior year when I knew they'd be extremely busy with school and sports.
Much easier to have someone else other than Mom/Dad setting deadlines. This meant by mid-Oct 90% of things were finished and submitted. By mid Nov everything except 2 schools (with Jan 1/5 deadlines for RD) were completed and those 2 sets of supplemental essays were into their 2nd/3rd drafts already.

Counselor also helped create a list of schools that met the criteria my DC wanted. Sure, I could have done it (did it quite successfully with older sibling who was not applying to any competitive schools). But ultimately the top 3 schools my DC got into and chose between probably only 1 would have been on my radar. Counselor put some hidden gems on our list that my DC really liked. So another huge benefit of the $3K, if you can afford it. In reality, probably the best benefit, as having the correct list of schools to apply to is really important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No rising hs senior is or should be ready for college. They have another year of school.

Back off your kid, OP. You think you’re being cute with your post. Your anxiety and stress around controlling your kid are not attractive, and you’re here looking for validation with other controlling parents.

+1

OP sounds exhausting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why we hired a consultant for our son four years ago to help with applications. He had to be accountable to someone, and we don't have to nag. School counselors don't have the same impact. We probably won't need to do this for our much younger daughter. Boys' frontal lobes develop at a slower pace. As a rising college senior now, he is just now showing real signs of maturity. Academically he has always been fine...I am talking about taking initiative to plan ahead, save money, etc. FWIW, he got into a top 20.

Okay. Tell me you are wealthy without telling me you’re wealthy.

We are comfortable, but we don't consider ourselves. We just have different priorities. My car is 9 years old, and my husband's is 11 years old. We have retirement savings, but won't be owning more than one home. I guess if you define that as wealthy, so be it.

Sounds wealthy to me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:School counselors of public high schools will have close to 1,000 seniors, you’re kidding right ?

Yeah but a lot of them are already working on essays. The counselor won't be hearing from a lot of them.

[Anonymous]

how much time does the eassys really take? My rising senior hasn't started yet, between work and summer school work, does it really take 1.5 hr everyday for a month? for how many essays?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ll go first: My rising HS Senior is spending more time on X-box this summer than writing his common application personal essay and getting his activities list in order. My hair and face is turning blue trying to encourage him to have a good draft - 1.5 hours a day - so senior year can be a little less stressful & so he can focus on strong grades senior year. Whelp .. I’m backing off. Who’s next?

Actually your kid sounds really ready. Not needing or wanting to be helicoptered and not requiring 45 hours (WTF) to write an essay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back off, mom. There’s plenty of time to do this when school starts back up, and the school counselors will help him through it. There’s no reason to be obsessing over this at this point.

Counselors will not help. Offer incentives to him over the summer to get it done. Too stressful to do once school starts.

Best $3K I spent was on a private college counselor starting Jan of junior year. This meant the counselor was the one nagging my kid to get the essay(s) done over the summer and I barely had to do any nagging. The common app general essay was 99% done by mid-August and the extra essays for 75% of their schools were 50% done by mid-Sept. Made for a much easier fall of senior year when I knew they'd be extremely busy with school and sports.
Much easier to have someone else other than Mom/Dad setting deadlines. This meant by mid-Oct 90% of things were finished and submitted. By mid Nov everything except 2 schools (with Jan 1/5 deadlines for RD) were completed and those 2 sets of supplemental essays were into their 2nd/3rd drafts already.

Translation: I was happy to pay somebody else $3,000 to be my kid’s parent for a few months.

[Anonymous]

NP. OP if you are like me, you get things done in advance so you won't be anxious.

However, lots of people (and many kids) need the stress of a looming deadline to get them going.

If your kid is like that (mine was), you'll be losing your mind soon.

But they get it done.

The issue with procrastination, is what they turn in is basically their first draft.

Whereas if it was us, it would be our 13th draft, as we finished it months in advance, and then edited it over and over.

But both methods seem to work. It's just hard when you're the marathoner and in charge of your kid, who is a sprinter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My rising college freshman did all the essays on his own timeline after school started. He got all the applications in on time and was not stressed about it. Your child is not you. They know what needs to get done. Let him do it.

Do I wish he had followed a different process like I would have at his age? Sure. But I'm not him.

+1. Mine didn’t even have a list of schools formulated by this point last year. Got everything done, on time.