Can't get high school junior to pick out colleges
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Anonymous
+1 Also have DC note whether s/he like the feel of a unified campus or something more spread out. |
Anonymous
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Oh and if he won't pick an area or from an area, you pick the area and then give him a few colleges in each category to choose from. if he won't even do that, you could pick them but make it clear that he will have to pick future colleges to visit.
he may do all of this late. he may not be ready to visit schools until senior year. he may even apply to schools without visiting them. But he will generate a list of schools to apply to, eventually, if you step back and let him because ultimately he wants to go to college. |
Anonymous
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OP ~ if I were advising your DC (and your family) I would start with this: Did you or your husband go to a private or public college? I contend that this is a starting point because -when it comes down to it -parents tend to value their own experience and wish to provide a similar experience for their children.
So having said that. My husband & I went to large state universities - in different states but there was a lot of similarities, both Division 1 sports, neither of us in the greek system. U's were big enough that greek didn't matter. We both had very good experiences. Not really knowing how else to help our DC we handed her a list. It is was list of state flagships listed from most to least expensive. We drew a line under the top few and said all others we could afford. There were 50 schools. We asked her to start researching any of them and to eventually have a list of 10 to apply to. We told her she could add privates or others we hadn't thought of IF she had a good reason and we could afford. |
Anonymous
I have to gently disagree with this. DH and I both went to large universities and DC is going to a SLAC and a particularly small one at that. We realized early on that it was her process and she might not pick the kind of school we would go to. But she has to live with it for four years. In the beginning visit a cross section of schools and parents need to keep an open mind about schools of the type they didn't attend. |
Anonymous
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OP,
Does your DC really want to go to college at this point in his or her life? Our DC showed a lot of anxiety about the college application process which continued into the first semester. If I had to do it over, I might have done a gap year in a foreign country, or go the local college route. If you are in VA, and take the right courses and meet the GPA requirment your DC can transfer to UVA or other schools after the second year. |
Anonymous
We've gone through the application process with our two oldest, and this is really good advice. The only thing I would add is to encourage you to see only one school each day. That way you'll have enough time to do more than just take the tour and attend the info session. If DC can go to a class, do that. If you can eat lunch in a dining hall, do that. If you can just hang out in the student center for a while and drink coffee, do that. Even better, go to a theatre performance or athletic event. The idea is to flesh out DC's picture of what it would be like to live on this campus and hang out with these people. You can look at websites and guidebooks to get a sense of which departments are strong, but the campus vibe is hard to figure out unless you're on the ground. |
Anonymous
22:40 gently disagree is a very nice phrase. signed appreciatively, 21:35 
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Anonymous
^^^ This. Or find him/her a job washing dishes somewhere, which should strongly pique his/her interest in getting a college education. |
Anonymous
+1. Also, as a family do you do any weekend road trips or have vacations planned this summer? If so, make it a point to spend a few hours at a college campus nearby. Headed to the Outer Banks? Take half a day and visit UNC-Wilmington. Going to Cape Cod? Drop by Boston College as you pass through Boston. Even if you don't think one of these particular schools is it, get tickets to a football game this fall and spend a weekend in College Park (stay in a hotel near campus), VA Tech or UVa. If you have your own limits to the search, let your teen know. Cost is the obvious limiter. Do you want to place a limit on distance or region of the country, for example. And, others also mentioned that you should probably have the conversations about whether your child wants to go to college. Would a gap year or stint in the military be more appropriate for them? |
Anonymous
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Lots of good pointers -- just a few additions based on our experience:
-- Don't just look at different types of schools, but APPLY to different types of schools. Kids grow a lot senior year and the SLAC that looked appealing in October may feel very confining/too much like high school come April. Or vice versa with big schools. -- What you interpret as disinterest may be an internal process that is still churning and not ready for parental consumption. College is usually the first big life decision that kids feel they own (and they should own it), but that means they will approach it at their own pace -- SAT prep, college counseling sessions and adult hectoring notwithstanding. I mean...what else in life takes TWO YEARS of deliberate preparation? And these are kids! Sheez, if pregnancy lasts nine months, you would think we could reduce the college admissions timeline to senior year. |
Anonymous
Not until she visited a school and then when she saw it was really possible she got engaged and started asking lots of questions. Pick out some schools that are possible for DC, drive and spend a day, preferably while students are in session, see if that gets a reaction. It was all the difference for my DD. It was a southern trip to Auburn, Georgia State and USC. |