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[quote=Anonymous]My oldest child went to a private school with a great college counselor, who came up with a list of colleges for my kid to apply to based on my kid's interests and grades/test scores. It was super helpful.

Our younger kids went to to public high school, with almost no help from the guidance department. [Her counselor asked DD if she planned on going to college? Yes, replied, DD (4.0 unweighted) without sarcasm.]

Here's the private school guidance counselor's suggestion for how parents should navigate the college admissions process:

Ask your child 
1) What type of school s/he wants to attend: large/small, urban/suburban/rural, geographic area? 
2) What areas of study does your child think s/he would like to pursue? STEM? Arts? Business? What?

Most likely, your kid will have no clear answer to either question, so you move on to the next step

Take your child to visit local schools, any colleges or universities that are near where you live. Large, medium, small. With Covid, you have to walk around and look at the buildings and trees, but sometimes you can go inside a few public buildings on campus, and you can also do virtual tours, which are moderately useful.

At this point, your kid might start to have some ideas about size/location/areas of interest.

Next, fill out the FAFSA. It's free at fafsa.gov (not fafsa.net or fafsa.com or anything else. Fafsa.gov is the official, free site). You need to figure out what you're expected to pay for college.

If you have ooodles of money, and won't need financial aid, yaaa! good for you. Move on. But if you'll need financial aid, you need to know what the government expects you to pay for your kids' college costs.

Google your kid's interests. If your kid likes Art History, then google "best undergraduate art history programs" Niche has a list here: https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges-with-art-history/

If your kid wants biology, say, google "best college biology programs" US News has a list here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/united-states/biology-biochemistry

You get the idea.

Then, go through the lists of colleges you find and see what schools match your criteria: large/small, urban/suburban/rural, location, etc. AND have programs that match your child's possible interests.

Next, gather your child's GPA and SAT/ACT scores.

Get a book about colleges, like the Fiske guide to colleges or the Princeton Review guide to colleges, and read about the schools that appeal to your kid. You'll find which schools roughly match your kid's stats.

Read College Confidential, DCUM, Niche, other online sources, but do not take them to heart. They are very subjective, and often just plain wrong. Everyone has an opinion, and experience with colleges is so varied that the advice you find on these websites is often contradictory.

At this point, you should have a list of potential colleges based on your kid's criteria, plus the likelihood your kid can get in based on test scores/grades, plus cost. This list can be very, very long, but that's OK.  You're going to cut it back to between 10 and 15 colleges eventually.

For the colleges that look promising, do the Net Price Calculator on their websites to see how much financial aid you'll likely get from that school. Financial aid varies a lot. The schools that are the most competitive often offer the most financial aid, but of course they are the hardest to get into.

Also, look at merit aid, which is not need-based. Many schools offer merit aid, usually schools that aren't as highly ranked or competitive. They basically offer merit aid to lure high stats kids to attend their schools. This is a very murky area, so don't expect to get clear answers from the schools about merit aid. They will say they offer "some" but won't tell you how they distribute it.

For most people, in-state tuition is the cheapest way to go to college, but if your kids are very high stats, they may get better deals or full rides at out of state public universities and at a few private colleges.

Normally, if you've got the budget, you'd go visit the schools on your list that look most promising. I visited dozens of schools with my older kids. But now that we have covid, many schools have stopped campus tours, which is unfortunate. But look on the school's website to see if they are offering tours and sign up for the ones you want to visit.

Or do the virtual tours, which I am not crazy about, but they are better than nothing.

Slowly, start narrowing down the list. Your kid may visit a state flagship and hate it, so cross that one off. Or your kid may say, yes, I love this place, look no further (you should be so lucky!), and apply Early Decision. BUT make sure to have backups in case your kid doesn't get accepted.

Do research and see what you find out. Your kid may decide, no, I don't want a school with Greek life (my oldest turned down many schools for that reason), or maybe she doesn't want a tech school because she isn't sure she wants to stick with engineering or CS, etc. Or maybe she wants a college with a great biology department but also a great theater department, etc. etc.

Keep narrowing down the list until you have 10 -15 good candidates. More than that is too expensive, and a waste of time. Apply and wait.

It's a long, hard process, OP, especially if you need financial or merit aid or your kid has special interests or needs.

You have to do the work yourself. If you have a motivated kid, s/he will do much of it, but most likely you'll have to do a lot of it. We did not get any help choosing schools from the college guidance office at our public high school. They were useless, but our kids got into good schools where they've been happy, so it's worth the effort.

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