Reply to "Outside of financial constraints: the kid should fully decide w/out parental influence"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Strongly disagree. Why would you want 17-18 year olds making life changing decisions without parental input? That's crazy. 17 year olds aren't even considered competent to enter into contracts.[/quote]

+1 My kid is asking us a lot of questions and wants some guidance. I can't imagine shrugging that off and telling them they're on their own. [/quote]

+2 I do generally think that once you have a set of acceptances in hand and they fit the parent's finances, the choice is the student's. If they want to bounce ideas off me, ask questions, etc. happy to do that. But I'm not going to tell them which one I'd choose, they need to own the decision and not feel like the are disappointing me if they pick differently.

For us, the building of the initial list was heavily parent-led. My kids were swamped with school work and intimidated about how to discern from so many schools what might be a fit. So I set up the initial set of tours to figure out if they had a size/setting/location/etc. preferences. From that I figured out what we could afford, learned about merit vs need aid, did a ton of research, proposed schools for them to go read about and say yes/no/maybe. We did some more tours and I suggested other schools to research based off that feedback.[b] Basically, I did what people hire a college counselor to do. Most kids (unless they are research nerds like me and don't have to consider cost) are going to have a hard time building an appropriate list with zero guidance[/b].[/quote]

New to this process: can you really hire someone to do this? I thought college counselors were more about suggesting strategies etc. -- [/quote]

A good College counselor will help your kid figure out what they want out of college: size/setting/location.  Typically start by visiting a variety within a 1-2 hour drive from home.  My kid then confirmed they wanted smaller but not too small (5-8K---HS has 2.6K so they didn't want a SLAC with only 2-3 K undergrads), ideally in/near a city (definately not rural), defined their major (down to a specific type of engineering) and that they were willing to go anywhere but don't want to be in the south/red states (wanted something a bit more open minded/progressive).    From their the CC helped put together a list of all the choices, including all of any size (ie including GATech, Purdue, UIUC, UMich because of excellent engineering despite my kid thinking they wanted smaller, at most 10-12K)

From there they helped cull the list down to 10-15 schools, making certain we had reaches, targets and safeties.  They put 2 safeties on our list I was not aware of (perhaps I'd have found it in my searches, I like to do research).  One being a true hidden gem that my kid kept on the list until after visiting in April of senior year.   Basically they made sure my kid had an excellent safety they would love.  And my kid got excellent merit at that safety as well.

A good CC will be vital to making the right list of colleges.  And then once you narrow it down and visit, helping you to know the key facts/issues---like where my kid ended up, they highly value an interview, so we were told, visit and if you at all like the place, then schedule your interview after you leave campus while the visit is fresh.  It shows good demonstrated interest, and the interview can happen while the visit is fresh in your kid's mind.  I never would have known how important the interview was at this school otherwise.  Yes, I can see it's "important" from the CDS, but I might not have realized that until later.  This way my kid had their interview done by July just after their July visit.  Before all fall interviews fill up.

IMO, a good CC is worth the $4-5K for use during HS if you can afford it.  
 [/quote]

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