My son applied to college without any assistance whatsoever. AMA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college without assistance from my parents 20 years ago. Why do parents feel the need to help kids now? Is the process more complicated or is helicoptering just too ingrained?

Go away.

I am actually asking seriously, although I see how it reads like a sarcastic snarky comment. My kids are little but I already see how helicoptering is so expected now that it's hard to avoid doing it--if you are sitting at a distance from your kids at the playground while other parents are up on the slide with theirs you feel like an asshole, especially if your kid pushes some other kid. So I can see how if everyone else is ghostwriting their kids' essays you might feel like you have to do it too to keep them on a level playing field. But I don't know so I'm asking out of curiosity.

Your kids are very young yet you're haunting the college forum. Helicopter parent in the making.

[Anonymous]

It's not ghostwriting of essays that we are speaking of. IF (and I say IF) you want your child/or your child wants to attend a "most selective school", it takes a lot of planning starting @ sophomore year. You need to figure out what special talents or true interests your child has an encourage extracurricular activities and excellence in those fields. they need to demonstrate a mutli-year interest in public service (the Common App. asks how many years you have done each activity so don't think you can load up senior year). For Tech schools, your child needs to finish calculus by the end of junior year with an A and show chemistry and hopefully physics completed by then. You need to have thought of a unique way to position your child so when they write their essays the admissions committee can say "I can see that kid walking and doing X on our campus". You need the grades. You need National Merit (PSAT). You need great SAT or ACT scores. YOu need terrific SAT II subject matter scores - some of which cannot be obtained without taking many AP courses or taking college courses in the summer before senior year. Some schools want to see two languages studied. Then you have to decide on a strategy - does your child have one special pick that is SCEA (single choice early action ). If so, that means she cannot apply to any other privates but may apply to elite publics so long as they are not ED (binding). For example, VA Tech is binding. You also want to apply early to a safety school with rolling admissions so your child is in somewhere before the madness starts. October 15th is now the application date for many honors schools such as Purdue Honors and Ga Tech Honors. Then Nov. l is SCEA and EA. Then come the regular decision applications in January if you aren't satisfied with your SCEA or EA. Or, in our case, SCEA was deferred and the EAs didn't come in until after Jan. 1st, so the RDs still had to go in. Then comes the FAFSA which you must fill out even if you have no shot at financial aid but hope for some merit aid. Then the CSS form. THEN - the "continuing interest" letters go in now with fall term's grades and any other honors racked up in the meantime. Meanwhile your poor kid has written out the Common App. but don't believe people when they say you just push buttons. The more elite schools all require side essays. Once that's done, it's $90 per application plus fees to send the college board scores, the ACT scores and the AP scores. This is not the era when we wrote out four applications, handwrote out a sloppy essay, got a $30.00 check from mom, mailed it all in in January and got into Stanford and 3 others on April lst.

Holy crap! Parents who haven't been through the process - it doesn't have to be this bad if your child is not bound for a "most selective schools" (and your ego can handle sending them to a school that isn't in the top 10). I assume someone besides me on DCUM has a child who gets a fair number of Bs and isn't the president of everything. The college application process is a hell of a lot less crazy for these kids and does not require nearly the level of helicoptering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's not ghostwriting of essays that we are speaking of. IF (and I say IF) you want your child/or your child wants to attend a "most selective school", it takes a lot of planning starting @ sophomore year. You need to figure out what special talents or true interests your child has an encourage extracurricular activities and excellence in those fields. they need to demonstrate a mutli-year interest in public service (the Common App. asks how many years you have done each activity so don't think you can load up senior year). For Tech schools, your child needs to finish calculus by the end of junior year with an A and show chemistry and hopefully physics completed by then. You need to have thought of a unique way to position your child so when they write their essays the admissions committee can say "I can see that kid walking and doing X on our campus". You need the grades. You need National Merit (PSAT). You need great SAT or ACT scores. YOu need terrific SAT II subject matter scores - some of which cannot be obtained without taking many AP courses or taking college courses in the summer before senior year. Some schools want to see two languages studied. Then you have to decide on a strategy - does your child have one special pick that is SCEA (single choice early action ). If so, that means she cannot apply to any other privates but may apply to elite publics so long as they are not ED (binding). For example, VA Tech is binding. You also want to apply early to a safety school with rolling admissions so your child is in somewhere before the madness starts. October 15th is now the application date for many honors schools such as Purdue Honors and Ga Tech Honors. Then Nov. l is SCEA and EA. Then come the regular decision applications in January if you aren't satisfied with your SCEA or EA. Or, in our case, SCEA was deferred and the EAs didn't come in until after Jan. 1st, so the RDs still had to go in. Then comes the FAFSA which you must fill out even if you have no shot at financial aid but hope for some merit aid. Then the CSS form. THEN - the "continuing interest" letters go in now with fall term's grades and any other honors racked up in the meantime. Meanwhile your poor kid has written out the Common App. but don't believe people when they say you just push buttons. The more elite schools all require side essays. Once that's done, it's $90 per application plus fees to send the college board scores, the ACT scores and the AP scores. This is not the era when we wrote out four applications, handwrote out a sloppy essay, got a $30.00 check from mom, mailed it all in in January and got into Stanford and 3 others on April lst.

Holy crap! Parents who haven't been through the process - it doesn't have to be this bad if your child is not bound for a "most selective schools" (and your ego can handle sending them to a school that isn't in the top 10). I assume someone besides me on DCUM has a child who gets a fair number of Bs and isn't the president of everything. The college application process is a hell of a lot less crazy for these kids and does not require nearly the level of helicoptering.

Can we be BFFs? Maybe this is a reverse humble-brag, but I'm glad my kid isn't in the rat race for the most selective schools for just this reason. The problem, of course, is that those who lose this rat race infiltrate the second-, third- and fourth-tier schools that are ideal fits for my solid but not superstar kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's not ghostwriting of essays that we are speaking of. IF (and I say IF) you want your child/or your child wants to attend a "most selective school", it takes a lot of planning starting @ sophomore year. You need to figure out what special talents or true interests your child has an encourage extracurricular activities and excellence in those fields. they need to demonstrate a mutli-year interest in public service (the Common App. asks how many years you have done each activity so don't think you can load up senior year). For Tech schools, your child needs to finish calculus by the end of junior year with an A and show chemistry and hopefully physics completed by then. You need to have thought of a unique way to position your child so when they write their essays the admissions committee can say "I can see that kid walking and doing X on our campus". You need the grades. You need National Merit (PSAT). You need great SAT or ACT scores. YOu need terrific SAT II subject matter scores - some of which cannot be obtained without taking many AP courses or taking college courses in the summer before senior year. Some schools want to see two languages studied. Then you have to decide on a strategy - does your child have one special pick that is SCEA (single choice early action ). If so, that means she cannot apply to any other privates but may apply to elite publics so long as they are not ED (binding). For example, VA Tech is binding. You also want to apply early to a safety school with rolling admissions so your child is in somewhere before the madness starts. October 15th is now the application date for many honors schools such as Purdue Honors and Ga Tech Honors. Then Nov. l is SCEA and EA. Then come the regular decision applications in January if you aren't satisfied with your SCEA or EA. Or, in our case, SCEA was deferred and the EAs didn't come in until after Jan. 1st, so the RDs still had to go in. Then comes the FAFSA which you must fill out even if you have no shot at financial aid but hope for some merit aid. Then the CSS form. THEN - the "continuing interest" letters go in now with fall term's grades and any other honors racked up in the meantime. Meanwhile your poor kid has written out the Common App. but don't believe people when they say you just push buttons. The more elite schools all require side essays. Once that's done, it's $90 per application plus fees to send the college board scores, the ACT scores and the AP scores. This is not the era when we wrote out four applications, handwrote out a sloppy essay, got a $30.00 check from mom, mailed it all in in January and got into Stanford and 3 others on April lst.

Holy crap! Parents who haven't been through the process - it doesn't have to be this bad if your child is not bound for a "most selective schools" (and your ego can handle sending them to a school that isn't in the top 10). I assume someone besides me on DCUM has a child who gets a fair number of Bs and isn't the president of everything. The college application process is a hell of a lot less crazy for these kids and does not require nearly the level of helicoptering.

Can we be BFFs? Maybe this is a reverse humble-brag, but I'm glad my kid isn't in the rat race for the most selective schools for just this reason. The problem, of course, is that those who lose this rat race infiltrate the second-, third- and fourth-tier schools that are ideal fits for my solid but not superstar kid.

Well, forget the Ivies, do you want your kid to get into UVA or a good state school? That's what it takes. Now go to college confidential and type in University of Virginia EA 2020 and read the resumes of the kids who were rejected at UVA for early action. Or look up the reusmes EA rejections of any school that you are thinking of sending your child to. Harvard and Yale both just received 37,000 applications this year and Princeton 27,000 just for SCEA. This system is utterly broke and it is only going to get more worse. If you want in-state, that's getting more competitive and much of the competition is coming from overseas. The EA class of GA. Tech has 97% taking (past tense, meaning already done by applicaiton on Oct. 15) AP calculus and 10 or more college-level courses. http://www.news.gatech.edu/2015/01/12/tech-accepts-5273-students-early-action-admission. Many of those are Chinese and Indian. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but today's college application process is nothing like it was for me 20 years ago. Read "What your high school won't tell you about the college application process".

[Anonymous]

And before you start beating up on me, the long-winded dad, you should know that I have an SN kid who is barely squeaking by in community college and another who was lucky to get into Christopher Newport, so I'm not hung up on elite ivies. Third kid is a supernova and doing this all on her own. Supernova writes all her own essays but parents still have to plan out all the visits, the strategy of when to apply and where, the financial aid forms, and the most important question - WHAT can we really afford and WHAT kind of merit aid or financial aid can my kid get. For ivies, that answer is zero for merit aid. For an unknown liberal arts college in Maryland, my DD was offered $100,000 ($25K per year). You must do your reading and know what you are doing or you will miss great opportunities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college without assistance from my parents 20 years ago. Why do parents feel the need to help kids now? Is the process more complicated or is helicoptering just too ingrained?

Well, me too, but it was considerably easier then. High school students now have it much, much tougher than we did. First, now it is a highly complicated, process-oriented venture, requiring more preparation, more documentation, and more time. Second, it is MUCH more costly to go to college, relative to first-years' post-abc earnings, and student indebtedness is quite the crisis, so more high school students fairly seek and expect more parent consultation than we did. Third, admission to selective colleges is much more competitive than it was, so a high school junior or senior is likely to have to apply to more schools, spend more money, spend more time, and require more support during the admissions season. 20 or 30 or 35 years ago, a good high school student in a good college-prep high school program would apply to two reaches, two goods, and two safeties. Now the number (from this cohort) is more like ten or eleven.

Analogies to "what I did back before the Big One" don't really work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's not ghostwriting of essays that we are speaking of. IF (and I say IF) you want your child/or your child wants to attend a "most selective school", it takes a lot of planning starting @ sophomore year. You need to figure out what special talents or true interests your child has an encourage extracurricular activities and excellence in those fields. they need to demonstrate a mutli-year interest in public service (the Common App. asks how many years you have done each activity so don't think you can load up senior year). For Tech schools, your child needs to finish calculus by the end of junior year with an A and show chemistry and hopefully physics completed by then. You need to have thought of a unique way to position your child so when they write their essays the admissions committee can say "I can see that kid walking and doing X on our campus". You need the grades. You need National Merit (PSAT). You need great SAT or ACT scores. YOu need terrific SAT II subject matter scores - some of which cannot be obtained without taking many AP courses or taking college courses in the summer before senior year. Some schools want to see two languages studied. Then you have to decide on a strategy - does your child have one special pick that is SCEA (single choice early action ). If so, that means she cannot apply to any other privates but may apply to elite publics so long as they are not ED (binding). For example, VA Tech is binding. You also want to apply early to a safety school with rolling admissions so your child is in somewhere before the madness starts. October 15th is now the application date for many honors schools such as Purdue Honors and Ga Tech Honors. Then Nov. l is SCEA and EA. Then come the regular decision applications in January if you aren't satisfied with your SCEA or EA. Or, in our case, SCEA was deferred and the EAs didn't come in until after Jan. 1st, so the RDs still had to go in. Then comes the FAFSA which you must fill out even if you have no shot at financial aid but hope for some merit aid. Then the CSS form. THEN - the "continuing interest" letters go in now with fall term's grades and any other honors racked up in the meantime. Meanwhile your poor kid has written out the Common App. but don't believe people when they say you just push buttons. The more elite schools all require side essays. Once that's done, it's $90 per application plus fees to send the college board scores, the ACT scores and the AP scores. This is not the era when we wrote out four applications, handwrote out a sloppy essay, got a $30.00 check from mom, mailed it all in in January and got into Stanford and 3 others on April lst.

Holy crap! Parents who haven't been through the process - it doesn't have to be this bad if your child is not bound for a "most selective schools" (and your ego can handle sending them to a school that isn't in the top 10). I assume someone besides me on DCUM has a child who gets a fair number of Bs and isn't the president of everything. The college application process is a hell of a lot less crazy for these kids and does not require nearly the level of helicoptering.

Thank you for posting this! These college prep posts freak me out. My oldest is not going to be a super star anything. I read some of these posts and wonder if there is any point to even trying anymore.

[Anonymous]

Well, forget the Ivies, do you want your kid to get into UVA or a good state school? That's what it takes.

UVA isn't just a "good state school" - it's one of the best. So no, I don't expect either one of my anti-superstar children to go there - that ship sailed once they had a couple of Bs on their report cards but I don't see any reason to torture them or myself over it.

My eldest DC was admitted to two schools with rankings similar to VA Tech (considered Top 25ish publics). DC has pre-Calc as a senior, 3 APs, a B+ average, very good but not stratospheric ACT scores, and few extracurriculars. No SAT IIs, no National Merit. No ED, NO SCEA, all decisions were in by February 1. 7 applications, 7 acceptances, avoided the Common App entirely and had very little stress about the whole thing. DC is very laid back. I helped research schools because I thought it was fun (I had few choices when I went to school) and paid the fees. Never read the essays.

I am starting to wonder if I can find the will to fill out the FAFSA in the next two weeks (oh and I guess figure out what the CSS is?)

[Anonymous]

I think there are just a handful of crazed 'my child belongs in HYP but yours does not' posters. If you scroll through the pages, the majority of school inquiries are NOT the unreachable achools. Some aren't even in the top 50 but will most certainly give you a quality education. GW is an example yet there are one or two posters who couldn't wait to vilify the school. Another is NYU, though pricey the main argument was there were too many Jewish students.

Use this forum as a source of education and sharing solid experiences, good or bad. Bypass, better yet ignore, the nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college without assistance from my parents 20 years ago. Why do parents feel the need to help kids now? Is the process more complicated or is helicoptering just too ingrained?

Both of my kids applied for college, filled out FAFSA and paid for college themselves. One is 24 and the other is graduating in May. Both finished in four years. Kids CAN be self-sufficient people!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college without assistance from my parents 20 years ago. Why do parents feel the need to help kids now? Is the process more complicated or is helicoptering just too ingrained?

Both of my kids applied for college, filled out FAFSA and paid for college themselves. One is 24 and the other is graduating in May. Both finished in four years. Kids CAN be self-sufficient people!

Yes, this is confusing. I signed up for the sat, did not prep for it, selected my college choices, applied and wrote my essay on my own, and figured out payment. I am 30. Is it dramatically different now?

[Anonymous]

^ For low ranked, high acceptance schools, you can still do that and, probably, still get in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college without assistance from my parents 20 years ago. Why do parents feel the need to help kids now? Is the process more complicated or is helicoptering just too ingrained?

Both of my kids applied for college, filled out FAFSA and paid for college themselves. One is 24 and the other is graduating in May. Both finished in four years. Kids CAN be self-sufficient people!

Great for you. The majority of 18-year olds do not have access to their parents financial information. Respectfully, just because your children were able to pay off their loans almost right out of college does not diminish those who do not.

Sorry, but there is no 'golly gee' moment here.

[Anonymous]

Yes it wasn't a great school. But I did the same thing for my Ivy masters a few years later. Don't think I even told my parents until it was a done deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college without assistance from my parents 20 years ago. Why do parents feel the need to help kids now? Is the process more complicated or is helicoptering just too ingrained?

I applied by myself and would have loved my parents to help me. I had no idea the importance of the college essay as I literally just typed it up as I sent the application online. My mom wouldn't pay for SAT prep course (we had the money) so I literally just showed up for the exam that I signed myself up for.

I intend to do better for my kids.

+1