@@ Parents with high schoolers close to college time

[formerlyak]

It’s early and my post title sucks, but I know there are many of us with kids in high school who are either making a decision about where to go or what to do next year after they graduate or are juniors and starting the process now.

There were so many responses on my last post on this topic, I thought a check in might be good.

How’s everyone doing? Parents of seniors, I hear college acceptances were a bit surprising to some this year. Did all your students find their places?

Parents of juniors (like me), are we ready for this? DS has been meeting with his college counselor at school and she said he’s ahead of the game in terms of application materials prep. He needed to make a resume and write a personal statement for some summer programs he applied to. So she’s working with him to refine it all so he just has to copy and paste a lot of things come fall. She also said she feels he will get in to some nice schools and have good choices to make. So I’m feeling a bit relaxed about it for now.

[esdreturns]

My DS is a junior. I'm pretty worried he's not going to get into the state schools here. His grades are excellent (high honors every quarters), but no honors society, not much in the way of extras, and I don't think he got great SAT scores. He works and is in the movie club. Community college is free in our state for first time students so I think that might be a better idea for him. He's in trade HS so he's been pretty wishy washy about college until recently. It's very stressful though!

Also, I'm completely not ready for this at all!

[styme46]

My oldest is a senior. We've visited 3 out of the 5 schools they've been accepted to and based on those visits, the plan has completely flip flopped from what is was when we started. I'm 98% sure they will end up at the school they were adamant about not attending (they only applied because the counselor made all the seniors apply to 3 schools) and 100% sure they won't end up at the school they really wanted to get into. 

We're going to new student day at the school I'm pretty sure they will go to on Friday and then will decide if they want to visit the 4th school or not. The 4th school is offering an incredible financial aid packet, but I'm not sure they will like it. 

[cjcouple]

I feel like I failed my kid. :-(

His high school is low scoring and frankly I don't even know if he is prepared. His grades are ok but slowly dropping each semester. Not horrible or anything but he went from a 3.28 GPA to now a 2.95. I'm trying to help him but he is just not super motivated. He enjoys school though. he is quite popular and plays sports, and I am frequently told that he is genuinely a good person by his teachers. He says he wants to go to college but IDK how realistic it is. We also have the free community college (thankfully) but I don't even know if the school prepared him for that. He is in in mostly CP classes (he's a junior and had 1 honor course last year and got a B) and they get so little homework. I don't understand it. He hates reading and uses audio books, which is fine as long as they are available. His grades closed last Friday and he has 86, 85, 80 and a 73 (Chem). He frequently bombs tests, but does well on individual assignments and projects. He wants to get a job but is not trying very hard. lol

This is my son that had selective mutism and the district was truly fantastic with helping with his SM so I just stayed where we are but now I'm questioning whether it was the right choice. Ugh - this is hard.

We are still plowing ahead. I just emailed his school to register for a FREE FAFSA seminar and looking for volunteer opportunities. I have 2 state tours sets up for Monday (spring break). Only time will tell what the future holds.

[fn2187]

Random question: is a B in a honors or AP class not generally considered good?

[cjcouple]

Apr 5, 2023 11:52:38 GMT -5 fn2187 said:

Random question: is a B in a honors or AP class not generally considered good?

I'm no expert but I thought a B in honors is better than an A in CP but obviously the kids woth As in Honors rank higher?

I could be wrong though. I know honors and AP are weighted higher.

[nicolewi]

My oldest will be a freshman next year. I can’t stop reading these threads, but they freak me out. I just want to put my head in the sand and pretend that we won’t have to deal with this sooner than I would like!

[luckystar2]

Apr 5, 2023 12:36:18 GMT -5 nicolewi said:

My oldest will be a freshman next year. I can’t stop reading these threads, but they freak me out. I just want to put my head in the sand and pretend that we won’t have to deal with this sooner than I would like!

Mine is a freshman this year and I feel scared! I have no idea when we need to start really looking into stuff. My dh says junior year but that feels late? I guess I just feel like this will take a while for my dd to make a decision since she’s very indecisive!

[luckystar2]

Apr 5, 2023 11:57:15 GMT -5 cjcouple said:

Apr 5, 2023 11:52:38 GMT -5 fn2187 said:

Random question: is a B in a honors or AP class not generally considered good?

I'm no expert but I thought a B in honors is better than an A in CP but obviously the kids woth As in Honors rank higher?

I could be wrong though. I know honors and AP are weighted higher.

Our school weights honors and AP - honors is an extra 5 points and AP is 10 points. So generally a B in AP would come out to an A.

Generally I thought the idea was a B in honors/AP was better than regular class. But yeah those who get As in honors/AP classes would still rank higher. I’d encourage my kid to take honors or AP if I thought they could get at least a B.

[jinkies]

I also have a current freshman. I received zero guidance from anyone when it came to choosing a college or major, and I have a lot of feelings about doing better for my son. He also wants to be a pilot, which is a more complicated path than traditional college so I'm really trying to deep dive on the options now so that we are prepared when the time comes.

I tell him often that 9th and 10th grade are about keeping your options open. Ninth grade won't be the deciding factor in getting into college, but if he completely tanks his GPA in 9th grade it may close off some options, or at least make them much harder.

Our school weights honors classes .25 and AP 1.0.

It makes it a tricky choice whether or not to do honors-- if he has a 3.0 and it's only a 3.25 weighted, but could have a 3.5 in standard-- which is better? He is ultimately sticking with honors because he does better when challenged, but it's hard to know the right thing.

[styme46]

Apr 5, 2023 12:42:25 GMT -5 luckystar2 said:

Apr 5, 2023 12:36:18 GMT -5 nicolewi said:

My oldest will be a freshman next year. I can’t stop reading these threads, but they freak me out. I just want to put my head in the sand and pretend that we won’t have to deal with this sooner than I would like!

Mine is a freshman this year and I feel scared! I have no idea when we need to start really looking into stuff. My dh says junior year but that feels late? I guess I just feel like this will take a while for my dd to make a decision since she’s very indecisive!

Do either of your kids know what they want to do as a career? Or have an idea what they want to major in? 

Speaking from my experience, my kid had no idea what they wanted to do in life. So we had a conversation with them about it and that they need to sort of figure it out because they are going to want to pick a school based on the programs they offer, and they can't do that if they don't know. BUT we didn't have this conversation until mid-late December and the one school they really wanted to attend had an application deadline of December 1st to qualify for scholarships.

All that to say that I would have a conversation with your kids early in their junior year so they can start researching and visiting schools before they are seniors. That way they can apply early into their senior year to make sure they hit those financial aid deadlines.

And I don't know if your schools have guidance/academic counselors or anything like that but that would be a good resource to use. Our school has an academic advisor, but her focus is on seniors, not sophomores and juniors like it should be so no one told us to start this process early and I didn't have anyone guiding me along in high school either so I had no idea how to go about things.

[1confused1]

My son is a sophomore, but we have already started getting him ready. He is hoping to be a D1 athlete, which have different class requirements than his high school graduation requirements so he has been working with his counselor to make sure those requirements are met.

We have been to a few schools for baseball camps and he has one school he is definitely interested in.

[orval]

I have a sophomore and we are starting to visit some schools this summer while we have time. He is interested in urban planning as a major so that is a little more limited than other majors. He wants to go north out of the heat and more urban location. Not sure how his grades will stack up and his school limits AP classes (one reason we chose it!), plus learning disabilities in math and written expression.
If you want to freak out, look at the Paying for College 101 on Facebook. On there, it sounds like college acceptance is a complete crapshoot - depends on the role a school is looking to fill.

[luckystar2]

Apr 5, 2023 12:57:03 GMT -5 styme46 said:

Apr 5, 2023 12:42:25 GMT -5 luckystar2 said:

Mine is a freshman this year and I feel scared! I have no idea when we need to start really looking into stuff. My dh says junior year but that feels late? I guess I just feel like this will take a while for my dd to make a decision since she’s very indecisive!

Do either of your kids know what they want to do as a career? Or have an idea what they want to major in? 

Speaking from my experience, my kid had no idea what they wanted to do in life. So we had a conversation with them about it and that they need to sort of figure it out because they are going to want to pick a school based on the programs they offer, and they can't do that if they don't know. BUT we didn't have this conversation until mid-late December and the one school they really wanted to attend had an application deadline of December 1st to qualify for scholarships.

All that to say that I would have a conversation with your kids early in their junior year so they can start researching and visiting schools before they are seniors. That way they can apply early into their senior year to make sure they hit those financial aid deadlines.

And I don't know if your schools have guidance/academic counselors or anything like that but that would be a good resource to use. Our school has an academic advisor, but her focus is on seniors, not sophomores and juniors like it should be so no one told us to start this process early and I didn't have anyone guiding me along in high school either so I had no idea how to go about things.

Yeah that’s part of the reason I feel like we have to start early. She doesn’t really know what she wants to do. She likes writing so has interests in being an author but not something like a journalist. That doesn’t feel like the best career path 🤣 she is big into her sport and has started volunteering at the gym. Next year she will be able to start working there coaching. So she talks a lot about wanting to be a coach. I tried to see if maybe she’d have interest in something like athletic training/PT. She is taking principles of biomed right now. And she doesn’t like anything to do with dissecting so I’m not sure if she’d be able to deal with a more medical type field. There’s a next class in biomed that she didn’t want to take next year but maybe she will later on.

Otherwise I don’t know! To be fair I really didn’t either. I picked a liberal arts school so I could really choose a wide variety of things (and I did like psych which is what I chose). But I didn’t choose my school for specific field.

[marvine]

DS1 is a senior and he was admitted to his first choice and we accepted admission. He was pretty low key about picking a school - he wanted a certain major and only a few colleges around us offered it. We went to an info session at the school that he's going to attend, and he knew right away it was the place for him. We just went to Admitted Students Day a few weeks ago and again we were all impressed and he's really excited to start in the Fall. (He applied to this school and one other)

For those of you who are worried - there is a place out there for every student. My DS is (what the FB group I joined would call) "average". His GPA is 3.5, 1190 on SAT, not a lot of AP courses or tons of school involvement. So I knew going into it that he wasn't going to go for the competitive schools (Ivys and the bigger State schools that are difficult to get into like Michigan and Georgia). First of all, those are too far away for us, we couldn't afford the travel - and second of all, he never had a "dream" school, that he's always imagined applying to. So look at big, small and medium schools - even if they're not big names that everyone would recognize. One of them will be the right fit (both academically and socially) for your student. And don't get caught up in the "my high stat student will get in to every school with tons of merit" - because there are 20,000 high schools in the US with high stats kids in every school, and there has to be a line drawn somewhere with admissions. Tons of qualified applicants get rejected or waitlisted.

[cjcouple]

I was a little confused about something I was seeing on the high school counseling page. It was advising Juniors that they should start thinking about their college essays. I thought applications had specific essay questions or are pretty general?

[nicolewi]

Apr 5, 2023 12:57:03 GMT -5 styme46 said:

Apr 5, 2023 12:42:25 GMT -5 luckystar2 said:

Mine is a freshman this year and I feel scared! I have no idea when we need to start really looking into stuff. My dh says junior year but that feels late? I guess I just feel like this will take a while for my dd to make a decision since she’s very indecisive!

Do either of your kids know what they want to do as a career? Or have an idea what they want to major in? 

Speaking from my experience, my kid had no idea what they wanted to do in life. So we had a conversation with them about it and that they need to sort of figure it out because they are going to want to pick a school based on the programs they offer, and they can't do that if they don't know. BUT we didn't have this conversation until mid-late December and the one school they really wanted to attend had an application deadline of December 1st to qualify for scholarships.

All that to say that I would have a conversation with your kids early in their junior year so they can start researching and visiting schools before they are seniors. That way they can apply early into their senior year to make sure they hit those financial aid deadlines.

And I don't know if your schools have guidance/academic counselors or anything like that but that would be a good resource to use. Our school has an academic advisor, but her focus is on seniors, not sophomores and juniors like it should be so no one told us to start this process early and I didn't have anyone guiding me along in high school either so I had no idea how to go about things.

Mine really has no clue at this point. I didn’t know, either!!

[sporklemotion]

Apr 5, 2023 13:49:28 GMT -5 cjcouple said:

I was a little confused about something I was seeing on the high school counseling page. It was advising Juniors that they should start thinking about their college essays. I thought applications had specific essay questions or are pretty general?

Most schools take the common app, which has standard essay questions that are really broad. Even schools that don’t use it often have questions that are broad enough to allow students to use the same or similar essays.
Many schools also have supplemental mini essays (100-200 words) that are specific to the school, but the “big” essay is the same for many.

I’m not an admissions expert, but I teach juniors and have seen many students go through the process. We usually tell students to start with the common app questions unless they know their school has something else.

[rooster222]

I have a senior and sophomore. My senior applied to 3 state schools and one out of state. She got into all 3 state schools, but not the out of state which was ranked #1 nationally for her major. The state school that she's going to is top 5 nationally. The other 2 state schools were not nationally ranked for her program and were just considered back-up options.

To paint a full pic, my dd was not extremely academic. I think her GPA ended up between a 3.15-3.25. she did take some honors, AP, College credit courses. She's had math tutors since middle school and still struggled to get C's. Her SAT scores were not great so she didn't submit them unless required. BUT...she is a hustler! She graduated early, has had a job for 2 years that pertains to her major, and was President of one club and VP of another club. She also competed nationally in clubs relating to her major, and also did sports for 4 years. She was able to fill in the academic gaps with other things and I truly feel the program she's going into is top notch.

My sophomore is very academic and does sports but not a lot outside of that and she's not sure what she wants to major in. We are trying to get her to do some job shadowing and right now she's only looking at expensive private schools. So she's all over the map but we are just keeping the dialogue going. And honestly I'm not ready to go on tours or anything until the other one has started this fall.

Oh and one more note, the state school my dd is going to has become more competitive over the years. There are certain programs that you can't get into with a 4.0+. You really you have to look at the programs individually. When you look at the average gpa for admitted students it doesn't tell the whole story.

[katb]

Just finished round 2 and 3 with my twins. Twin A very high GPA - 3.92, 1400 SAT,tons of AP classes, president of honor society, four year 3 sport lettered athlete, volunteered many hours to tutor and intepret for the ESOL students.
Twin B- great all around student, no AP classes, solid 3.0 - 3.1 GPA, No SAT score, did take high school program for resource management, danced all four years, joined many clubs and dabbled in all kinds of classes.

Twin B was the easiest believe it or not. She applied to 4 colleges - two in state, two OOS. Accepted at all of them. Some very small scholarships based on essays/applications (no merit/fin aid).

Twin A - So stressful!!! She also was accepted to every college applied to except George Washington (waitlisted) but we can't afford that without a lot of merit anyway. She received merit scholarships to Ohio, West Virginia, and Dickinson. Some small merit to in state Universities. She accepted In state University and will live on campus.

So I thought all along, twin B was going to community college (which I would have been happy about) because what you read on some of those parent facebook groups. Not at all. Twin B's college I had never heard of but it is a great fit for her. So spread a wide net based on what you know and do some research.
The problem is many students are now applying to 10 - 20 schools so schools have so many more applicants than in recent history.

[formerlyak]

Apr 5, 2023 11:52:38 GMT -5 fn2187 said:

Random question: is a B in a honors or AP class not generally considered good?

Generally? Yes. When your kid is at the top of their class and competing for one of very few spots at highly selective schools? No B is good regardless of the class. It's crazy competitive compared to the early 90s when I applied to college.

DS has a 4.4 because of weighting for honors and AP and says, "I ONLY have a 4.4." I'm like, "Shut up with your "only". Your GPA is great and you will have lots of good choices." But truth is, I have friends with current seniors who have 4.2 GPA or around there and didn't get into any UC schools this year. California public universities are really hard to get into these days. Luckily, his list includes all types of schools.

[formerlyak]

Apr 5, 2023 13:49:28 GMT -5 cjcouple said:

I was a little confused about something I was seeing on the high school counseling page. It was advising Juniors that they should start thinking about their college essays. I thought applications had specific essay questions or are pretty general?

Most colleges use the Common App now and Common App released their questions for the 2023-24 application about a month ago. Our kids are the same age, and DS' college counselor at school told him to start now as well. He has a draft that he turned in to her and they have a meeting after Spring Break to review it.

[cjcouple]

formerlyak, Crazy high GPAs now a days. My friends daughter is a junior, 1st in her class and has 4.7612 or something crazy like that

My kids doomed...lol

[formerlyak]

cjcouple, your kids isn't doomed! There really is a college for everyone who wants to go to college. I worked in higher ed for 20+ years at all different types of colleges. It's just a matter of finding their place.

[cjcouple]

formerlyak, That was more TIC....lol

That's why we are still moving along and building his resume and portfolio.

I also am going to get him to apply early to a few schools I know have rolling admissions for a better shot at getting in. I'm touring 2 schools Monday in the hopes it motivates him a little more. I really want him to get that GPA back above 3.0 for the better chances. Truth be told, I know he'd be fine at CC for 2 years and then transferring to a 4 year. I'm honesty going to be more heartbroken for him if he gets denied at his first choice (whatever that ends up being) and he gets bummed.

[lab7979]

Apr 5, 2023 14:45:53 GMT -5 cjcouple said:

formerlyak , That was more TIC....lol

That's why we are still moving along and building his resume and portfolio.

I also am going to get him to apply early to a few schools I know have rolling admissions for a better shot at getting in. I'm touring 2 schools Monday in the hopes it motivates him a little more. I really want him to get that GPA back above 3.0 for the better chances. Truth be told, I know he'd be fine at CC for 2 years and then transferring to a 4 year. I'm honesty going to be more heartbroken for him if he gets denied at his first choice (whatever that ends up being) and he gets bummed.

I had the same experience with my boys.  I just couldn't motivate them.  They kind of fell apart during covid and didn't have the time or ambition to come back their last year.  They both graduated with below a 3.0 gpa and they really didn't do that great on their ACT's either.  I was so worried they wouldn't get in anywhere, but they did.  They applied to 5 state schools and were accepted at 4, waitlisted at 1.  My kids were super active in sports and music and had other things to beef up their resumes.  Not every kid is a straight A student and I don't think it's necessary unless they want to go to an ivy league school or somewhere really prestigious.  They applied early and we spent a lot of time on their essay.  If the schools he is applying to use the common app, they have prompts but there was also a choose your own topic option.

[liveintheville]

Mine’s a freshman. We’re still trying to instill in him that he needs good grades to get into college. Right now what has our attention is the price of college these days! Umass is like half the price of private schools. But both H and I went private and I want him to have that option.
He likes and does best at math and science and computer programming. So he’s leaning towards computers or engineering. Provided he can get in. His grades so far are ok but it’s like pulling teeth with him to do his homework. We probably won’t start seriously looking until he’s a junior.

[outnumbered]

Apr 5, 2023 15:47:41 GMT -5 liveintheville said:

Mine’s a freshman. We’re still trying to instill in him that he needs good grades to get into college. Right now what has our attention is the price of college these days! Umass is like half the price of private schools. But both H and I went private and I want him to have that option.
He likes and does best at math and science and computer programming. So he’s leaning towards computers or engineering. Provided he can get in. His grades so far are ok but it’s like pulling teeth with him to do his homework. We probably won’t start seriously looking until he’s a junior.

UMass Lowell has great engineering school. It is a hidden gem. The cost is affordable and they offer great merit scholarships. It is smaller than UMass Amherst. People look down their nose at the smaller state schools like Bridgewater State or a worcester State, but the class sizes are 20 to 25 students often taught by profs who are adjuncts at the private colleges. My daughter is a senior down to weighing her options between two private and two public (in MA). She will probably end up at a public school and not be saddled with debt.

[georgeglass]

We are done! I work at a K-12 school and work closely with our college counseling. We didn't tour as early as we should have (Covid). My son has strong grades (4.4), a 1360 or something SAT which we were told not to submit. My daughter has a 3.7 or something similar. Son was sure he didn't want the competitive medium sized state school where his parents went and stay active, and then late summer decided he did and wanted to apply Early (he got in). He had a number of friends do the same. Daughter was all over the place - HUGE state school and schools like Dickinson (jinx, katb ). She applied ED to the huge state school and got in, even though their admissions are a crapshoot. They found out the same minute of the same day. Stress!

Our school really recommends Early decision apps if you can swing them. We really liked Dickinson's merit pre-read, so we knew what her merit money was there. Other friends did the NPC to figure out if they could afford it. A big mismatch in NPC and financial aid offered was a reason a friend's kid withdrew from ED obligation.

My kids were so glad to have the decisions over with. We were glad they chose schools with good fit and decent chance of admission. So much is up to chance, though - some schools just jump in popularity for no obvious reason year to year. My daughter, whose admission was less assured, had some good back up schools she was excited about and had applied EA to those.

ETA: Your school sends a letter to colleges explaining your school - so don't worry if APs are limited, or GPA scales are weird - the colleges SHOULD take into account your school's stuff and not compare apples to oranges.

[cjcouple]

Apr 5, 2023 15:35:09 GMT -5 lab7979 said:

Apr 5, 2023 14:45:53 GMT -5 cjcouple said:

formerlyak , That was more TIC....lol

That's why we are still moving along and building his resume and portfolio.

I also am going to get him to apply early to a few schools I know have rolling admissions for a better shot at getting in. I'm touring 2 schools Monday in the hopes it motivates him a little more. I really want him to get that GPA back above 3.0 for the better chances. Truth be told, I know he'd be fine at CC for 2 years and then transferring to a 4 year. I'm honesty going to be more heartbroken for him if he gets denied at his first choice (whatever that ends up being) and he gets bummed.

I had the same experience with my boys.  I just couldn't motivate them.  They kind of fell apart during covid and didn't have the time or ambition to come back their last year.  They both graduated with below a 3.0 gpa and they really didn't do that great on their ACT's either.  I was so worried they wouldn't get in anywhere, but they did.  They applied to 5 state schools and were accepted at 4, waitlisted at 1.  My kids were super active in sports and music and had other things to beef up their resumes.  Not every kid is a straight A student and I don't think it's necessary unless they want to go to an ivy league school or somewhere really prestigious.  They applied early and we spent a lot of time on their essay.  If the schools he is applying to use the common app, they have prompts but there was also a choose your own topic option.

That's great to know. Thanks.