choosing and getting into college

[ny biker]

Help! My nephew, who is a junior in high school, just sent me an email asking for help in choosing and applying to colleges. Most of what I know on this topic I learned back in the 80s, so I don't know how things have changed since then and what has stayed the same.

I can start with basic questions he needs to think about, like what subjects interest him/what he might want to major in, as well as environment questions like small school vs. big, urban vs. middle o'nowhere, etc.

If anyone has any advice or experience in this process that is more recent than mine, I'd appreciate it. Also, he lives in NY but is interested in the DC/NoVa/Baltimore area, so I might wind up asking you mid-Atlantic ladies for input at some point.

Thanks!

[Lifesgreat]

His high school counseling office may be a tremendous resource for him. Our HS had information from colleges, scholarship information, etc. and a whole room of books and computers kids could use to help with college, career, funding, etc. School counselors can help too.

I would have him start with his high school and he could look online too. His state government (state board of ed., local school district) may also have resources too, through the internet. BEWARE of places offering to get funding for a fee and other "too good to be true" stuff.

[tulip]

Take a look at this with your nephew. It's a wonderful organization, and a wonderful take on the whole college experience.

http://www.ctcl.org/

[greycoral]

If he doesn't know which general direction to go into, I would suggest completing general education courses at a local community college. Hopefully within those two years, he will have taken a liking to something, and it will be easier to choose a "real" college after that. It's so much cheaper, and often times the classes are smaller than what you'd find at a university. I'm dual enrolled at a local community college and Oregon State university, and the class size difference is astounding. A chem class at OSU has over 300 students, where as the class i'm taking at the jc only has 25. Much better!

[applegum]

If he's set on the NoVa/DC area make sure he knows almost all of the good schools are private. If he likes the scene from those areas though and wants to be in a city, VCU is a pretty good school and Richmond is a pretty fun city. Every single one of my friends from high school with the exception of one ended up there, whether by transfer or straight out of school. I almost went there, but ended up in Toronto instead.

[tulip]

If he's set on the NoVa/DC area make sure he knows almost all of the good schools are private. If he likes the scene from those areas though and wants to be in a city, VCU is a pretty good school and Richmond is a pretty fun city. Every single one of my friends from high school with the exception of one ended up there, whether by transfer or straight out of school. I almost went there, but ended up in Toronto instead.

I didn't go there, but the University of Maryland is a very good school and it's public. It is about 8 miles from the center of DC (and very close to Proteus, the Best Bike Shop Around!) George Mason is also public and quite good. It's on the DC Metro line. James Madison is a further out, but a good school, too (and public). Of course, being an out-of-state student will mean that tuition is high in all public schools. I don't know much about VCU even though I live in Richmond, but it seems to be a vibrant and active place. It has a great art and design program, and city planning is also pretty good. So is social work, I hear, and I'm sure all the rest, too. Richmond is a neat city with lots to do. The University of Richmond is here, too. It's small and private, but very pretty.

[Zen]

+1 to U of MD (and the community college route).
Fear the Turtle!

[Irulan]

I second the "use the counseling office" post. My sons absolutely adored the gal who was the resources person for this stuff. She had shelves and shelves of college catalogs.

Here's my advice : if your kid can hack it, keep those grades WAY up and get on the honors track. My one on son had 27 credits waived as a result of his AP testing. That saves us more than a semester of tuition. Plus, good performance opens the door to merit awards.

WE pretty much let our kids choose where they wanted to go ( within reason)

[Irulan]

If he doesn't know which general direction to go into, I would suggest completing general education courses at a local community college. Hopefully within those two years, he will have taken a liking to something, and it will be easier to choose a "real" college after that. It's so much cheaper, and often times the classes are smaller than what you'd find at a university. I'm dual enrolled at a local community college and Oregon State university, and the class size difference is astounding. A chem class at OSU has over 300 students, where as the class i'm taking at the jc only has 25. Much better!

class size depends on U choice also. My one son is at a small state engineering school that only has 3000 student and also has the small class experience.

[Sheesh]

I work at a college and I agree with all of the previous posters. By the time he is applying, if he doesn't yet know what he wants to major in, he should explore community college. He should also figure out what he can afford since it seems that student loans are becoming much more difficult to get. And, ultimately, I'm not convinced that the benefits of a private school balance out the additional costs.

The Princeton Review has some good online resources.

[badgercat]

I graduated from high school in 2004, so my college experience was very recent...so I'll probably ramble a bit here (sorry )

I went to the University of Wisconsin; it was the perfect fit for me and I got a top-notch education and incredible research experience. My parents were worried at first that I was "selling myself short" or by not going to Princeton or Northwestern or something crazy like that (very few people in my family have gone to college so we were pretty clueless about the whole thing going in), but they came to love UW almost as much as I do.

Yes, it is often true that these bigger schools have some large classes (I had at least one that was 500+), but I also had classes (taught by full professors) that had 10 people in them. It's also not true that you never get to know your professors at big schools--99% of mine loved getting to know students. I even had professors ask me to babysit their kids. You just have to be willing to approach them to have a conversation.

I would add that he should try to visit several different schools, even ones that he thinks he might not like--he might be surprised what sort of things actually appeal to him in a school. I could tell very quickly from the time I rolled into town on my college visits (and again in the past couple of years, when I was deciding where to go to graduate school) whether or not a particular school was somewhere I could see myself. And I didn't always know that I liked the feel of a big state school--I had to visit a couple smaller schools and private schools before I figured that out for myself.

I believe that it doesn't matter so much how "good" a school is on paper--if you don't like the experience of living/studying/working there, it's not worth it. I'd be willing to say that's more important than going to a "good" school. I was accepted by graduate schools that were ranked "better" than the one that I chose (including the almighty Northwestern that my parents originally wanted me to go to for undergrad), but that doesn't mean that they were better for me.

That's about all I can think of right now. Best of luck to your nephew! I'd be happy to add my experiences about other things if he has more specific questions later on, but I fear this post is already far too long to add anything else.

[NbyNW]

Grew up in western PA and went to college in NYC in the early 90s . . . so, not so recent, but I have familiarity with the regional schools through friends & family . . .

One thing that helped me, and I imagine would still be true for a lot of kids, is visiting the campus and talking to current students can be very helpul. I did a summer road trip with my mother the summer after junior year to look at a bunch of colleges. And when I was accepted to my first choice school, which I had not yet visited, I was able to go to a prospective students weekend. I think it's really important to get a sense of campus life and whether you feel that it's a place where you would want to spend four years.

We had a few transfer students join our class during sophomore and junior years, so that can also be a possibility if someone doesn't get it right on the first try, but I often hear that tranfers have a different experience, i.e., they don't always feel they identify with a class since they went through a different orientation process. That may or may not be a factor to some people.

I'm not sure if I agree with going to a community college first . . . my experience with cc's in my area was that they had moved mostly into the area of vocational/technical/re-training education and don't necessarily prepare you for transition to a four-year college, as is a common practice on the west coast. Some four-year colleges might not accept transfer credits from a community college . . . you have to carefully research the policy at the college that you are interested in.

Another factor to look at is college (undergraduate only) vs. college within a university. Some people prefer a college with a focus on undergraduate education. I personally enjoyed the opportunity to interact with graduate students and to learn from them. Their advice was very valuable to me as I considered my options (work vs. more study) in my last year of college.

[BikeDutchess]

+1 on doing campus visits. My son just started college this fall. He visited several schools during his senior year and it was an eye-opener. The school he ended up choosing was the one where things just "clicked" when he visited. Of course the academic opportunities are important, but so is the atmosphere/environment. The students seemed happy to be there, seemed to be there for the right reasons (not a "party school"), the campus was just the right size and located in an area he really enjoyed.

Another thing that was a reality check for him was to create a spreadsheet comparing the costs of attending all the schools he was considering. He was offered several scholarships that initially were very appealing. But when he compared the total remaining costs of all his choices, it became very clear to him that even with those scholarships some of those schools would be quite a stretch financially.

[Crankin]

Ah, he should be getting guidance from his counselor at school...
At my kid's high school, their counselor met with them at the beginning of their junior year and told them about the resources for searching colleges. We did a trip at the end of their junior year, when they had narrowed their choices, but my older son applied a couple of places even after he was done with the whole process; like in January of his senior year.
I went to 4 colleges; a small private school, a community college, an upper division state university, and a large state university. They all had their plusses and minuses. You get what you put in. In some parts of the country (like here in New England) it is not common to go to a community college and it is still frowned upon. I know, that is stupid, but it's the truth. My older son thought he wanted to go to a small "alternative" type school and applied to all schools like that. He ended up going to Hampshire College for a year and then transferred to U Mass Amherst, because he found out he really liked the diversity of a big campus.

[Aggie_Ama]

Eh I didn't do it right, I did most of my planning and deciding on my own. My counselor just didn't click with me.

College Class of 2003 here, so pretty recent as well. I knew I had to go in state or get a scholarship due to my parent's ability to pay. I narrowed it down to four state schools and was blessed that Texas has an automatic admission for anyone graduating in the Top 10% of their class. Since I knew none would reject me I applied for 4 that I thought I might like. Two were smaller schools I didn't think I would like but I thought by chance I might get a partial academic scholarship or something. Then I went to tour the campuses and get a feel for what I wanted. I went the UT-Austin visit and hated it. UGLY tall buildings, noise of downtown and just something very not me about it. Then I saw Texas A&M- trees, quiet, lots of cool WWII era buildings, sprawling campus and a town that is college centric. I knew where I would be for four years after 2 hours.

We had large classes at A&M and it worked for me very well. On some classes where discussion is key the class only has about 20-40 people. I took an African American Literature class like this and it was one of my favorite classes. Some of the classes I took (Zoology, Management, Finance) had 300-500 people but I was okay with that. Some were large (Business Law at 150-200) but the professor really made the class smaller and knew a majority of us. Honestly every semester I had huge classes and small ones, it is a mix and it worked for me.

+1 on taking AP if he is a good enough student and has the desire. I tested out of 27 hours through AP and CLEP tests at the university, starting college 3 hours shy of being a sophomore. I also got to bypass the so-called "weed out classes" this way. I was able to graduate in 4 years but only one semester took over 13 hours. Many of my friends that wanted out in 4 years took 17 hours or summer school every summer. I took 9 hours summer school my first summer just so I didn't have to suffer through notoriously boring classes at A&M.

My advice- tour campuses, talk to the guidance counselor about strengthening his application, take college brouchures with a grain of salt (on paper UT seemed like my first choice). I got to do an immersion weekend at A&M which started Friday and it ended up being great.