What do you wish you knew about the college process before starting high school ?

[Anonymous]

Study and take the SAT and/or ACT.
If you do somewhat well (at least in line with your GPA), you will get automatic merit from most colleges (at least below ivy league)

[Anonymous]

The student's list and parent interest in the process, should be built from the bottom-up. Embrace the mantra: Love Thy Safety. Actually, expand that to loving a choice of safeties.

Unless there is a ED application, it's ridiculous the amount of energy/debate/focus (in Va for example) on whether the student prefers UVA or WM. Same for MD with UMD. Of course those schools will at least be considered if the student gets in ... duh. Parents/students, it counterproductive to ruminate about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The top 150 colleges are ALL great colleges.
You can get a good degree and future career from ALL of them.

+1 The differences are not as great as USNWR and others make them out to be. The Less High School Stress website has all the evidence you'll need to believe that's true. Read the Rankings section and look at the lists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It cost is an issue, don’t rule out privates. Private schools sometimes offer better aid packages than more affordable state schools because they have some wealthy alumni donors, so don’t automatically think state schools are all you can afford.

+1 And it's not just about wealthy donors. These colleges generally have an average revenue per student they need to hit and they price high knowing they'll give varying levels of discounts aka scholarships to encourage students to accept.

DD has acceptances from some OOS LACs, an in-state public, and an OOS public. The in-state public gave merit and is currently the cheapest at $17k/yr but all the rest, with sticker prices ranging from around $45-$69K, have offered merit to bring the price to about $30K. She's still waiting on W&M, which will be the most expensive at $37K (in-state) because we know they won't give any merit there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My number one piece of advice is, if you are even passingly interested in top schools, get a math tutor now. Even/especially if your kid is a "humanities kid".

Your kid's guidance counselor gets asked if your kid took the most challenging classes. If they didn't take calc bc and ap physics c (for most high schools around here) the counselor can't say yes.

Get the tutor now and keep it up through graduation rather than crying about it later.

So your advice is to keep pounding, pounding, pounding until the square peg is worn down enough to fit through the round hole?

Any normal student can get pretty good at math with enough exposure. Most of our schools don't offer enough exposure, so supplementing is a good idea.

PP is implying that everyone should aim for AP Physics and Calculus. This is absolutely not true.

If you are interested in the very top schools, it is.