My son applied to college without any assistance whatsoever. AMA

[Anonymous]

DC wants to go to super selective schools. We're happy to write the checks - luckily we had 18 years to save up and won't be doing a FAFSA. But, DS and I have absolutely no interest in "helping" in the application process. We're not going to read the essays or ask anyone to write a letter of recommendation. Frankly, I'd rather not visit colleges, except I like taking road trips with DC. If DC wants to go to a college with a 5% acceptance rate, DC will need to take the initiative and sort it out.

DC's kept a calendar for assignments since middle school and knows how to ask teachers for advice and guidance. There's a handy checklist and timetable from the college counseling office to build from. DC's heard what the interview process is like already. And, DC knows family friends who are faculty and alumni of the target schools to ask detailed questions.

For a young adult with every advantage in the world, it isn't asking too much for DC to "take the lead." If DC can't get her act together to apply to the first choice schools, then DC probably doesn't belong there.

[Anonymous]

Okay, as a mom who has three kids at great schools (Northwestern, Duke, and Yale), I can share our experience.

First, my kids are normal kids. Yes, they took AP classes and have picked up enough credits to finish a year earlier, but they we not culled for this rat race. I am a single mom who barely had time to keep tabs on them let alone push them into Kumon when they were young.

Second, the unifying thread with all three of them (besides the fact that they had good grads and test scores) is that they are intensely passionate about one thing. My daughter actually spent two years away from college (Yale) studying ballet before giving up the ghost and heading to college. She's a great dancer, but I think she had to ** try ** to go big before deciding to pursue college. Yale really supported that decision and it was the right choice. She's in medical school now and is a fairly happy young adult.

My one son was crazy about computers. I mean, he took classes at Mason at night as a senior to learn more computer science stuff. He had good grades, etc. but I think the thing that helped him at Northwestern was his passion. I mean, the kid worked part-time at an internet company near Dulles as a junior and senior doing random coding projects. He's a senior and moving to California after graduation.

My youngest was an athlete and recruited to swim at Duke.

All of these kids were bright of course. But they had things they were crazy about -- I didn't push them but I did support their interests and spend a lot of time, money, and energy helping them do whatever they wanted. The main thread is that these types of schools are not just looking for good grades. They are interested in kids who are passionate and driven.

[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?

Same here. My folk wrote check for the application fees but that was about it.

[Anonymous]

Sure, if money is no object, the kid has lots of other resources at her disposal, and her parents don't want to do anything beyond write checks, a laissez faire approach makes sense.

I'd have been happy not to read DD's essays but since DH and I not infrequently ask each other to look at drafts of things we're writing, I wasn't surprised (and didn't see it as a sign of immaturity) when DD asked me to look at hers. Some advice she took -- some she rejected. Again, par for the course at our house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

Ugh. i couldn't even make it all the way through that litany of helicoptering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

Ugh. i couldn't even make it all the way through that litany of helicoptering.

Agree, and the problem arises in the first line: "if you want your child/or your child wants to attend a 'most selective school.'" The choice should be up to the kid, not the parent. And if your kid wants to go to Harvard they should take the lead in making it happen.

This makes me wonder: do college applications nowadays ask the applicant to say how much help they received with their application, and whether they took test prep classes? It seems like requiring disclosure of that information might help level the playing field with kids whose parents are not as involved in the minutiae of building their kid's resume.

[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?

Same here. My folk wrote check for the application fees but that was about it.

P.S.: Number of campus visits? Z-E-R-O, and I didn't know anyone else who did them either. This was in 1986/87.

[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?

Same here. My folk wrote check for the application fees but that was about it.

P.S.: Number of campus visits? Z-E-R-O, and I didn't know anyone else who did them either. This was in 1986/87.

This is 2016. Things have changed slightly in 30 years.

[Anonymous]

Presumably PP realizes that, which is why s/he mentioned the date. And the question is what has changed and with what effect? In the past, some kids routinely went off to college sight unseen. Were they more or less happy with their choices than kids who have done tours are today? Is it a waste of time and money (and/or somewhat misleading) to base college selection on campus visits?

Visits certainly changed my DD's preferences. We only toured places that fit academic and other criteria developed in advance -- so it wasn't a fishing expedition. OTOH, any of the schools on her list would have been good choices, so it's not clear that the revised ranking is better than

[Anonymous]

Her preliminary ranking.

[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?

Same here. My folk wrote check for the application fees but that was about it.

P.S.: Number of campus visits? Z-E-R-O, and I didn't know anyone else who did them either. This was in 1986/87.

Maybe it depends on your peer group. My parents happily drove me up and down the East Coast to visit schools on my list. And most of my HS friends did the same. In 88-89.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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".

+1 Our friends are VA residents and not helicopter parents at all, nor striving for name brand colleges, but I can't believe how involved they were because it was absolutely necessary. The DH made it practically a full time job because they needed tuition help. They also previously researched colleges that wouldn't be affordable, including their big name state school alma mater, and took them off the table so there wasn't any heartbreak at admissions time. It can be a lot to look at majors, schedule visits, check myriad forms, and help your student navigate.

[Anonymous]

pp, and I meant the parents OOS big name school alma mater

[Anonymous]

For most merit packages or scholarships, you still have to file the FAFSA so the school has a basis to work from. i don't think we will qualify but we did the FAFSA and the CSS because that's what the schools asked for.

[Anonymous]

Here's background on the CSS for those who are unfamiliar with it (required by most Ivies in addition to the FAFSA). https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/financial-aid-101/how-to-complete-the-css-financial-aid-profile