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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oldest child is a senior in public HS. Was accepted ED to a top 10 school. Almost all college acceptances are now out. Here are some takeaways I learned watching my own kid + students from her HS go through the process. Thought this may help parents of rising seniors. Others are free to chime in and to agree/disagree. Not sure if my insights apply to private school students although there is obviously some overlap.

1) This is obviously an emotional process but kids who approached it strategically rather than emotionally did better. Don’t get overly attached to one school without good reason.
2) Top grades + varsity sport + excellent test scores are not enough for ivy admission. You need something else such as legacy, famous grandparents, minority or URM, chief editor of school newspaper, girls applying for engineering, etc.
3) Don’t waste your early application on Harvard or Stanford unless you are legacy or recruited athlete or have won an exceptional prize
4) Yale seems to love legacies 
5) ED gives you a better shot than EA
6) Work really hard on your essays and get multiple adults to read them over and give you feedback. Does everyone get the point you are trying to make? If not, revise or try again. For top 25 schools (except large publics) your essays need to be extremely high quality 
7) Avoid writing about race and diversity if you are white
8) Look beyond the popular schools that everyone is applying to at your HS
9) Don’t apply ED to the top school that 5-10 other kids from your HS are applying to. Get excited about a different school 
10) There are probably at least 1-2 other kids at your school who have an almost identical profile to you - same interests, same classes, same teachers for recommendations, similar test scores. Make sure you are not all applying to the same schools. I saw a few best friends who were very similar apply to all the same colleges for the same major and it did not work out well.
11) Kids who decided to apply ED to terrific schools that were within their reach but a step down from higher rated schools that are a gamble for anyone mostly had good success
12) Kids who were obsessed with brand names and focused on top 10 when they should have paid more attention to schools one tier down were left disappointed with end result. 
13) Not worth it to keep taking SAT or ACT in search of perfection. Once you hit 75% level, you are fine. Focus on other stuff 
14) No point in submitting applications 1-3 months early. Complete them early if you must but then let them sit and look at essays again in a few weeks. Do you still love them?
15) Rigorous course load is very important. Do the best you can

Good luck![/quote]
+1 All great advice. 
From my DD's perspective. Also focus on getting good recs and essays! Essays are the only way to show your kid's personality. Also, find schools that are financially viable. She saw friends get into their dream school, and then they weren't able to afford it. But, she and her friends were happily surprised when the results came out and they will be going to their dream schools in the fall. She wishes she could celebrate in person with them, but instead made a virtual map with pinpoints of every college a student got into. [/quote]

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