S/O How did you/your child search for their college?

[georgina]

My DS knew from an early age what he wanted to do also, we visited a school open house in the spring of his sophomore year and he liked it. That's where he ended up. I initially took him to the open house because I thought he needed some motivation to work a little harder in high school. He really didn't visit any other places, but I made him apply to a rolling admittance school with his major so he would have something to fall back on.

With DD's we would drop by schools when we were in the area for other things so they could form impressions. Older DD wanted a city school and looked mostly at Boston and Washington DC. Younger DD wanted smaller liberal arts so she applied a bit more widely and ended up in California. She did a lot of research online mostly junior year, and got a lot of mail which is how she discovered her school.

 

[indimom]

Our daughter started visiting schools during summer before junior year. We visited about 6 schools, in and out-of-state, public and private. Applied to the four she liked best. Chose the one with the best scholarship offers. She's five hours away (furthest school on her list). She's a junior now. Looking into grad schools and proximity is playing a bigger role this time. We'll see where that takes her.

 

[Lilacs4Me]

My son always knew where he wanted to go. Then he was talking to his HS counselor when he was a Junior and the man told him about another college in the same area as DS's first choice that housed a 6 year Physical Therapy program instead of the normal 7 year program, so he fell in love with that idea. We visited the campus and he was hooked.

Easy, peasy!

DD has no idea what school she wants to go to (9th grader), but I'm sure she will start narrowing it down in the next year or two. She wants to be a doctor, and wants to go into the Navy once she graduates with her Bachelor degree.

Other than that, it's pretty laid-back here. We are a family who values time and money over prestige, so I predict my kids will all pretty much pick one of the nearby state colleges in the Midwest, within a few hours drive for us. They have decent grades and participate in enough extra-curriculars to be well-rounded, so getting in won't be a problem. We don't have very high aspirations to be part of the 1% lol, so we don't put a lot of pressure on Ivy League college acceptance. A nice, quiet middle-class life is good enough for us!

(not saying any other choice for anyone else is bad...we believe every class is a good class )

 

[wgeo]

All of these responses definitely put me at ease. I can see we still have lots of lots of time for the kids to figure this out.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

We have a lot of colleges around us so I used to just take the kids to different campuses to walk around and sometimes have lunch and such. I wanted to demystify what a college campus was like. They naturally found some they liked a lot and some they liked less so, but it was good for them to figure out why. When we traveled we did the same. We wound up visiting many college campuses in many states. By the time they applied they pretty much knew what they were looking for - DD applied to just one college and DS to two, and they were both accepted to them.

 

[MissyDisneyFan]

technically i'm not a mom...but i'm a college graduate with both parents college graduates too. It was kind of easy for me to pick because I wanted to go to the same college as my dad went because he had told me so many great stories (plus going to college in Las Vegas sounded fun)..

 

[HeatherC]

I’m not sure anyone mentioned this, but I would suggest doing the net cost calculator for the schools you may be interested in seeing. I know several people who took their kids to see a school and the kid fell in love with it but then it was totally out of reach financially for the parents. In other words, if a school is $60,000 a year and you can afford $20,000 a year, that is a big gap even after financial aid and scholarships come in to play. Just another thing you may want to keep in mind.

 

[Alsobrook]

1. Ordered map from AAA.
2. Taped map to cork board.
3. Blindfolded kid.
4. Pointed kid at dartboard.
5. Kid threw a dart.
6. This fall, kid will be attending OMG THE CAT University.
7. Probably should have not done step 3.

 

[Kellydelly]

I have a freshman in college. She did some local college tours with her high school, but she didn't have a very broad area for us to look at. She wanted to study physics and picked her schools based on their physics ranking. I figured she would not go far from home and she didn't, only about 50 miles. I have a junior who has no idea what she wants to be. Money is not unlimited so she will probably go to a local college, and may even commute even though her sister lives on campus. I have no desire to flit around the state looking at the various schools when she has zero clue where she may like to go. We will figure it out with limited travel, I am sure.

 

[TB'sWidow]

I have a senior about to graduate an she has indeed picked her school but we didn’t start looking till last summer and in all honesty that was too late we should have started touring schools long before then. We just couldn’t see them all an really experience what they had to offer. Ultimately we are happy with her choice but this was a last minute school that we went to the admitted students day an she felt so at home there it is the right fit. Good luck in your search it is very overwhelming.

 

[Colleen27]

I think our process was a little odd because my daughter is a little odd. She's had her eye on a particular major/career path for many years, so for us it started with schools that offer related programs that also had good grad school admissions records and a generally rigorous academic reputation (there's a lot of overlap between schools with marine bio programs and total beach party schools! LOL). She also wanted to be in an urban environment - she doesn't want to have a car during her college years and still doesn't drive, at 17. Then she added another, absurdly specific academic ambition (a second major in Japanese), which narrowed the list even further.

We started visiting schools during her sophomore year, though we did a few informal visits on our own before that to help her get a feel for differences in school size, campus setting, etc., and we're not doing our last visit until next week (to a school she's already been admitted to but is a little iffy about). I'm glad we started early because none of the schools she liked on paper have been in state, so it has been a lot of traveling to visit those that made the short list. Application season is fall of senior year, so it was really helpful to have things narrowed down by then, though she did still end up applying to a couple sight-unseen and may actually commit to a school we didn't visit at all because it is 2000+ miles from home and we ran out of time/travel budget before getting there.

 

[cvjw]

We told our boys they had to stay instate for free tuition. My oldest son decided it would either be Georgia Tech or the University of Georgia for him. We toured Ga Tech, but did not ever tour UGA. He ended up not getting into Tech, so UGA it was. We went there for our first tour after he was already admitted and committed. It was a little overwhelming because the campus is so large, but he ended up thriving there. And it is a top college for accounting majors, so it was a perfect fit.

Younger son wanted to go to UGA or Auburn. UGA is basically free, and Auburn is $50,000 per year, so he is also going to UGA.

The decision was very easy in our family.

 

[Hrhpd]

My oldest is finishing 9th grade, and I have an 8th grader right behind him. So - how soon did you start really looking at colleges? And what did looking at colleges mean to you? Did you take multiple trips to tour colleges, spend vacation time touring etc.? What's the process, and when do submissions/applications really start - end of 11th grade, beginning of 12th?

My kids knew by sophomore, early jr year what they were going to major in. They then researched the top ranked colleges in their major. After they figured out what the top 8 schools were, they then started narrowing it down from there on other things they wanted, ie location, campus life, etc.

In their chosen majors, the big companies recruited heavily from the top colleges, so that was their main focus. We didn't do campus tours because they really didn't care what the campus was like. They only wanted the education and the reputation. They figured anything else they didn't like, they could suck it up for 4 years. Lastly, we took into consideration the financial package offers.

They actually found good fits and survived their bachelors, and as promised, were more easily recruited than if they had gone to an equally good, but lesser known school.

 

[Mickeypooh99]

My DS is a college freshman. I wasn't really involved in the process other than giving him money for application fees. He did all his own research. Mostly online. He used the net cost calculator, and had a spreadsheet. He had visited a few campuses locally with school field trip during junior year. He was also dual enrolled at a college nearby. He didn't end up applying to any schools he had visited. The dual enrollment school offered him their highest scholarship if he'd apply there. That was his fall back plan. He applied to 2 schools restrictive early action at the beginning of senior year. 1 private and 1 public. We had those responses in December. Luckily his first choice school ended up accepting him and giving him a great financial aid package, but it was in California. (We are in Michigan) So we never visited. He saw it for the first time on move in day, and he loves it! So far his major is undeclared. The school encourages them to wait until end of sophomore year to decide.

 

[bjscheel]

DD20's college visits were summer before and fall of senior year. We didn't search too far and wide. A local public, my alma mater, a private that wanted her to run track, and a community college, all within 2 hours drive. She wasn't too hung up on the college thing and chose a CC program that would have her degree complete in 2 years (graduating next month!).

DD17 however, has been all about the college dream through most of HS. Her first visits were spring of junior year. Even before that she did a lot of online searching for that super awesome affordable college that no one from school has ever been to. (Tip: There's not very many of those- mainly the affordable part eliminates them .) I did a lot of online searching for automatic merit and started reading on College Confidential. We ended up visiting 5 schools, finishing October senior year. Two Christian and three small publics. Over time she developed a super specific list of wants and a somewhat rare major that all pointed to one particular school that's fairly close so that's where she'll be going.

At first she really wanted to go far away but over senior year things changed and now she is happy to be less than 2 hours away. I'm glad we visited one far away school for her to feel the distance and see the travel involved.

 

[arminnie]

I'm always amazed when I read about involved this process has become. Sounds like it is so much harder now. When I went to college a half century ago I applied to two schools. I got accepted at both but only got scholarship money at one so that's where I went. My father never finished the 10th grade so parental involvement was zilch. Where I went was 100% based on where I was going to get a free ride.

In-state public schools were never an option for me as they did not give out scholarships way back then. I'd never even been to Louisiana when I went to college there (Newcomb College of Tulane University). It was such a fabulous experience - New Orleans and academic excellence. I did my graduate work at Stanford Business School, but I don't think I would have liked Stanford as an undergraduate. Stuck on the Farm with no transportation would have not been nearly as interesting as being able to hop the streetcar and head to the Quarter.