College admissions

[EmmasMom]

My daughter just started her junior year in high school and I want to help her come up with a list of possible colleges to apply to explore. Any advice as to where I should start?

[Jeff-Upromise]

Here's an article that you might find helpful in order to get started. I hope that helps.

https://lty.s.upromise.com/member/resourceCenterArticle.do?aid=whats-important-to-you

[Momto2]

How about attending local college fairs? Our high school posts its guidance department calendar on the school's website. Right now there are several colleges visiting the school each day plus one or two regional college fairs per week.

Are you in a very rural area where college fairs are far away? Does your daughter have any inkling as to what type of school she'd like to attend? Do your finances constrain her choices? Can she take some classes at the high school that also offer community college credit? (Our school does this for a $100 fee and you can get credit for a whole course - that's the cheapest dollars/credit hour I've heard of.)

Let us know more and hopefully people will have some ideas!

Momto2

[kykyla]

I highly recommend the book College Match: A Blueprint for Choosing the Best School for You for identifying the attributes you want in a college. Then, I would use the Fiske Guide to Colleges to create a list of colleges. (This Guide only lists 500 out of about 3,500 colleges in the U.S., so you can find school that are good that are not listed in this guide, too.) Lastly, if time and budget allow, I would suggest that you visit these colleges. This does two things 1) it lets you see if the college is for your student and 2) it lets the college know that you are truly interested in their college.

[nymomof2]

You might want to check www.collegeboard.com. On the home page, to the left there's a College MatchMaker. Click on it and you'll get a questionnaire asking the student's preferences. It covers everything from distance from home, 2 or 4 year college, campus setting, school size, housing preference, diversity of student population, available majors, costs, etc. Once done, you'll get a list of possible colleges.

[BethsDad]

EmmasMom --- have you considered the five United States Academies? Few people know that in addition to the four military academies (Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard) there is also the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point NY. The education, room and board is all paid by the government. Jim

[EmmasMom]

Thanks BethsDad and all who responded. This is all really helpful advice. I appreciate your thoughts and help.

[katytibbs]

My son is the same age. We are going on a trip in a couple of weeks to visit a few schools to give him a feel for what different colleges look and feel like.

Oh, and I asked my son's guidance counselor for help, and she mentioned a site called coins, which his school subscribes to. You might want to ask her counselor what the school provides http://www.coin3.com/

[Jeff]

Katytibbs, I was just reviewing your post from last year in which you mentioned visiting schools with your son.  How did the college tours go?  Is he a senior now?  Where is he at in the application process?

By the way, here's an interesting post from Campus Bound.  It's a Q&A with a recent college grad.  She offers up some advice to high school juniors and seniors related to the college search.

[SallieCan]

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EmmasMom wrote:

My daughter just started her junior year in high school and I want to help her come up with a list of possible colleges to apply to explore. Any advice as to where I should start?

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collegeboard as mentioned above is a wonderful site---not only to find colleges that are a good match but to calendar all the dates you need to track for admissions applications, tests, etc.  Went through this last year with my daughter---one problem I encountered was the admissions application fees--was $50 to $60 per college so had to limit my daughter to 5 applications as we didn't qualify for free fees.