How much early is (not) too early

When should I start thinking about colleges for my child?

My son is just in middle school, isn’t it too early for him?

I’ll send my college applications at my senior year, why should I bother myself during 9th grade?

I usually get questions, similar to above, from parents and students about the college admissions process. So, when you should start thinking about the possible colleges for your kids? I may say as early as you came out of “fresh daddy/mommy shock” you can start thinking (or should I say “worrying”?) about your newborn's possible college destinations. OK, mentally you would do this activity, how about the physical acts of caring as responsible parents? Should you order SAT and ACT prep books to refresh your memory so you will be able to help your kid when it is the time? Maybe you should buy SparkNotes’ No Fear Shakespeare series for bedtime reading instead of Caldecott Medal and Newbery Award winners? How about saving money for $40K price tag of Upper-Manhattan private pre-schools? Is your 6th grader too young to attend an admission information session of a highly selective university?...

I can make this list longer, but I believe you have got the idea. By the way, the above mentioned crazy ideas have been considered (if not applied) by many parents. So what should you do?

Start from the age-appropriate activities for your child at colleges/universities close to you and by the time gets closer to the high school years increase the intensity of the activities. For example, if your elementary school kid likes any sport that played at nearby colleges take them to these games and let them feel the college atmosphere. Take your middle school kids to the college library, instead of the one closer to your home, to do their homework. Almost every college/university have spring open house dates where they showcase everything their campus have for a wide age span. Take your kids of any age to these open houses to see some cool robots, smokey and flaming experiments, and play fun games at the college campus. During your dream Southern BBQ trip to Nashville, TN, instead of eating every meal in the restaurant, take out one of them and eat on the beautiful campus of Vanderbilt. Add some cool LA schools to your Disneyland itinerary. When returning from your work-trip at NYC brought a cool Columbia University gear to your child. My 4-years old loves his “Future Harvard Freshman” t-shirt and tells everyone he will go to Harvard, although only going Harvard in his life (so far) is enjoying the playground in Cambridge Commons.

By doing this, you would engrave “college” to your children’s mind, and hopefully, everything in their life will become somehow related to college.

What is in the College Application Packet?

When you start cooking the dinner, you either use your mother’s secret recipe, a cookbook, or Tasty’s facebook posts to get ideas and the ingredients. Different meals have different ingredients, and different chefs are cooking the same recipe in different ways.

Like your dinner cooking, when your children start cooking college applications, they need the right ingredients for the right colleges. As a common practice, most of the schools need the following main parts in any application

  1. Personal/Family/School information
  2. Transcript, usually the rigor of the transcript
  3. The Essay; 350 - 650 words personal statement
  4. Standardized test scores
  5. Extracurricular activities
  6. Recommendation letters; your child should request and teachers write
  7. The school profile; nothing to do with your child, the counselor (hopefully) prepares and sends along with the other documents.

Some schools need extra information, or in some cases, your child would have special circumstances;

  1. Supplemental essay
  2. Good Moral and Character
  3. Geographic residency
  4. First Generation to College
  5. Extraordinary ability in sports, visual and performing arts, makers’ portfolio etc.
  6. Mastery in an uncommon language or your mother tongue, if immigrant.
  7. Caring for the community and common good, active citizenship, community service.
  8. Class Rankings
  9. Alma mater/Alumni relation
  10. Low socioeconomic status
  11. Being a minority.

I know it is too much to chew right now, so I will talk about each of these items in this blog in a deeper way in upcoming posts. If your kid is in the junior or senior year and you cannot wait for my blog post, just contact us for personalized information about your needs.

What The Test?

State Test

PSAT

SAT

SAT Subject Test

Compass

ACT

AP

IB

TOEFL

CLEP

Please, some help!

So, your child is entering his/her junior year and will take many (if not all) of the above mentioned standardized exams (if you hear that your neighbor’s 6th-grade son already took his second SAT don’t worry, your child is still not behind.) Now your questions are which, when, why, and how.

Colleges need standardized test scores to have some idea about where the applicant stands compared to the national pool. Therefore, for many colleges’ application, your child needs at least one standardized test score, usually SAT or ACT. Some selective schools ask SAT Subject Test scores. If your kids are taking AP, IB, or Cambridge Advanced level courses at high school, most of the colleges want to see (not a requirement, just they want to look at them if possible) those exam scores in the application. If you newly moved to the US or an international applicant from a country that main language is something other than English, then you might need TOEFL or IELTS scores.

Go back to your neighbor's son; he might be in a gifted and talented program that requires to take SAT exam in sixth grade or his parents are crazier than you! Don’t worry; your child has many chances to take SAT or ACT throughout the year. Also, there are many test-optional and test-flexible colleges (this means another blog entry will be posted about this topic, coming soon!) to consider.