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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My oldest is in 8th grade and will be choosing classes soon for HS next year. I know it’s early and we are not putting pressure on them to research colleges or do early SAT prep or anything of the sort. We don’t even care much about top schools despite having a pretty smart kid who has been on the advanced track (I know, a dime a dozen around here!).

I was on my own for college planning when I was in HS and it also seems like a totally different ballgame now.

Any advice for those of us whose kids are just getting into the HS years? Anything you wish your DC had done differently? Anything to ease the stress of it all?[/quote]

- Talk often, openly and early about constraints. Make it very clear what you think you can afford. If you’re willing to pay more for certain schools or programs than for others, talk about that. If your child truly wants to major in women’s studies, talk about the concept of double majoring in marketing or accounting. But don’t let your kid get into Yale and only then say Yale costs too much.

- Try to be positive about all sorts of schools and life paths. Talk about how well going to plumbing school can work out. Talk about the idea of going to community school and transferring to a four-year school.

- Get new or used copies of books like Lisa Birnbach’s college guides or Princeton Review college guides, and have them lying around, so your kid might, through reading or osmosis, get the sense that some schools are a lot different than others.

- Surrender enough of your privacy to at least get a free Niche.com login, so you can see click through past the regular admissions scattergrams and see how the intended major affects the results. The bottom line: It’s usually better to tell a selective school that you want to be a history major or math major than a CS major, business major or premed. Whenever possible, kids who want to go to famous schools should try to present themselves as wanting to major in the humanities, or in the more theoretical sciences. For kids who aren’t obvious CS geniuses, telling a selective school you want to major in CS is like saying, “I just applied as a way to donate the application fee to you. Please reject me instantly.”

- Think hard about your origins.  Do you or your spouse come from a country with universities that would be great for your kid? How selective would those schools be? What would they cost?

- Make it clear what kind of help you can and can’t provide with things like paying for tutoring test fees, standardized l tests and college tours.

- Once you’ve done these things, back off. Let your kid and your kid’s high school do the rest. Surface only when your kid needs your credit card, or needs help with financial aid form info, transportation to interviews or help with international schools’ admissions and visa processes.

The reasoning: If your kid takes no initiative and doesn’t help with the college search process, that’s a sign your kid isn’t really ready for college. Maybe some kids from homes where no one has gone to college need help with understanding how and why to play the game. But I think pushing an unmotivated, middle class kid from a supportive home kid into college is going to lead to bad results. It would be better to talk to kids like that about job training programs.

If your talented kid does get involved, but doesn’t spontaneously do a great job of prepping for standardized tests, and, say, ends up with UMBC, rather than Johns Hopkins: Chances are this kid will end up being a big happy frog in a small UMBC pond, instead of one of these poor kids who’s struggling to pass organic chemistry at Johns Hopkins. When a bright kid doesn’t prep, and just glides into college along the path of least resistance, that’s a sign the kid needs to minimize stress more than to get into the toughest possible college.

If your kid takes charge of picking colleges, choosing suitable AP classes and prepping for tests: That will be a kid with the energy and independence to thrive at a very selective college, or to do well in tough classes at a big state school.

Of course, if you hire an expensive consultant, that person might be able to jam your kid into Johns Hopkins as, for example, a biology major. But, really, it’s completely insane to jam a kid into weedout classes at a place like Johns Hopkins or Wash. U. Helping a so so science student squeeze into STEM programs at Wash. U. or Johns Hopkins, let alone Harvard or Yale, is like helping Stephen Colbert squeeze onto an NFL team. He might feel proud for three minutes, but then, once he’s on the field, he’ll be pulverized. You don’t want your kid to be the regular biology major in a room full of biology giants.

If you have plenty of money for consultants, it seems as if consultants could be helpful with helping kids decide between Bates, Colby or Bowdoin, or figuring out how to apply to schools in Scotland. But, if your kid will probably really be applying to your state flagship, a safety like UMBC, and some well-known glamor schools, then you don’t need a consultant. 
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