They can transfer. It's very scary to take all this on. Hug them and tell them in 10 years, it does not matter

Anonymous wrote:So for those who had to push their kids, what do you think will happen when they get to college and have to be completely self-motivated?

I expect mine will be totally fine. He is in charge of his current academic workload and knows he wants to go to grad school so knows that grades are going to be very important.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow I wish my parents were as helpful as you all were when I was applying to undergrad back in '10. Neither of my parents went to college so I had absolutely no help in applying (even my counselor was of little help) but I ended up getting into 7 of the 8 schools I applied to. I couldn't imagine not taking charge. I know that you are all afraid of your kids not getting into good schools but perhaps in the future you should just let them figure it out on their own.

I was like you when I applied to college. My parents were near alliterate so it was all up to me. I was driven, organized, and tried my best to get into a great school. But for my DD, it is completely different. She works reasonably hard but never has been driven... Applying to college is too big an issue to let her figure it out. Before and during the application process, I asked several people at workplace and they all helped their kids. Actually, what their kids did were writing the essays, selected their dream schools, and requested transcripts and recommendation letters. Parents did the rest - reminding them of the deadline, fill out the financial forms, selecting the safety schools, and submitting the testing scores.

In my opinion, the current college application process is way too complex to leave it to a 17/18 year old.

I absolutely agree with this.

The college application process seems to have gotten much more involved than it was when I did it many moons ago. There are no safety schools anymore so students are applying to more and more schools just to make sure they have someplace to go next year. Kids are also much busier now with jobs, AP courses and/or sports that have them coming home at 8 pm and getting to bed in the wee hours of the morning after studying and completing homework. My afterschool routine was hanging out with my friends. And when college app time came around, it took me all of 45 minutes to complete the application for my safety school. That was it. Just one application. The hardest part of the entire ordeal was getting a stamp and envelope to mail it in.

Kids today are driven much too hard and have too much on their plates to leave such a complex, important job up to them alone.

However, I do wish my son had been much more motivated.

Anonymous wrote:Wow I wish my parents were as helpful as you all were when I was applying to undergrad back in '10. Neither of my parents went to college so I had absolutely no help in applying (even my counselor was of little help) but I ended up getting into 7 of the 8 schools I applied to. I couldn't imagine not taking charge. I know that you are all afraid of your kids not getting into good schools but perhaps in the future you should just let them figure it out on their own.

Very catty judgement to make on family dynamics that you are not privy to at all. Just because my kid is a senior doesn't mean that she still didn't need parenting, encouragement, and an extra kick in the pants to apply to colleges while maintaining her grades, her senior activities, and other issues that I won't divulge here. She still had to fill out the applications, write the essays, and attend alumni interviews. My role as a parent was to take her on college tours to get her interested, help her research the colleges that we thought would be a good fit both academically and financially, and not let her slack off.

Sorry that your parents showed absolutely no interest in your college academic career, but I don't think that's something that is right or appropriate for all families. We're paying for her education and we are invested in her, and it paid off in the way of acceptances and a good learning environment for the next four years of her life.

Anonymous wrote:Wow I wish my parents were as helpful as you all were when I was applying to undergrad back in '10. Neither of my parents went to college so I had absolutely no help in applying (even my counselor was of little help) but I ended up getting into 7 of the 8 schools I applied to. I couldn't imagine not taking charge. I know that you are all afraid of your kids not getting into good schools but perhaps in the future you should just let them figure it out on their own.

I was like you when I applied to college. My parents were near alliterate so it was all up to me. I was driven, organized, and tried my best to get into a great school. But for my DD, it is completely different. She works reasonably hard but never has been driven... Applying to college is too big an issue to let her figure it out. Before and during the application process, I asked several people at workplace and they all helped their kids. Actually, what their kids did were writing the essays, selected their dream schools, and requested transcripts and recommendation letters. Parents did the rest - reminding them of the deadline, fill out the financial forms, selecting the safety schools, and submitting the testing scores.

In my opinion, the current college application process is way too complex to leave it to a 17/18 year old.

So for those who had to push their kids, what do you think will happen when they get to college and have to be completely self-motivated?

Anonymous wrote:Wow I wish my parents were as helpful as you all were when I was applying to undergrad back in '10. Neither of my parents went to college so I had absolutely no help in applying (even my counselor was of little help) but I ended up getting into 7 of the 8 schools I applied to. I couldn't imagine not taking charge. I know that you are all afraid of your kids not getting into good schools but perhaps in the future you should just let them figure it out on their own.

You don't know my son.

My concern was not having him get into good schools. It was actually having him apply to a school!

Oh that little logerhead of mine. I love that little lazy lamb chop.

We had to do a decent amount of nagging, but DC did take ownership of the essays and the school part of it (transcript requests, teacher recs, etc.). Getting deferred ED seemed to be a wake up call as well so those last 2 weeks were quite productive. DC goes to a big public school so the counselors were no help at all.

Wow I wish my parents were as helpful as you all were when I was applying to undergrad back in '10. Neither of my parents went to college so I had absolutely no help in applying (even my counselor was of little help) but I ended up getting into 7 of the 8 schools I applied to. I couldn't imagine not taking charge. I know that you are all afraid of your kids not getting into good schools but perhaps in the future you should just let them figure it out on their own.

Pretty much the same story here.

My spoiled, lazy and coddled DS did virtually nothing. I had to ride him through the entire process. I was thrilled when he got an early acceptance to a good school so the nightmare of pushing and dragging him through it would end.

My DD was similar to the previous two PP's. She did only two applications without being reminded and pushed. Both rejected her. She got in three safety schools and now is regretful...
What hurts her the most is her GPA though.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter did not take control at all. She is normally a pretty independent student, and has been able to handle high school, ECs and everything else on her own with little parental involvement, but for some reason, she "choked" when it came to college applications and deadlines.

She is now regretful because some of the schools she was rejected to, she knows she did not really apply herself and wonders what kind of difference she could have made if she did. And also, other schools that she never applied to because she didn't make deadlines.

She was accepted into five good schools though, but that was more because her parents took charge, and less to do with her drive.

"Senioritis" seemed like a silly term to me until I actually experienced it with my student.

This was similar to our experience. I tried to let DD "be the driver", hounded her to do her essays, get her SATs where she wanted them and keep up her grades. I did much more of the college box-checking, deadline-keeping than I ever imaged that I would. But I feel together we did the very minimum required and she only go into 3 decent but safety-ish school. I wasn't willing to do more but she could have done a lot more to better position herself for college applications/acceptances. Now DD is saying what she should have done to get where she wanted to go. It's prettying disappointing. Her older sister, on the other hand, was over the moon at this time 2 years ago.

Mine did, eventually. DC mMade the call to apply ED2 to what became top choice school after visits, analysis, one EA admit. Accepted. DC's school has an amazing college counselor. Without her, I would have been more involved.

My daughter did not take control at all. She is normally a pretty independent student, and has been able to handle high school, ECs and everything else on her own with little parental involvement, but for some reason, she "choked" when it came to college applications and deadlines.

She is now regretful because some of the schools she was rejected to, she knows she did not really apply herself and wonders what kind of difference she could have made if she did. And also, other schools that she never applied to because she didn't make deadlines.

She was accepted into five good schools though, but that was more because her parents took charge, and less to do with her drive.

"Senioritis" seemed like a silly term to me until I actually experienced it with my student.

do you feel your child took control of the application process? Or did you have to enforce deadlines?