My last college application was over 30 years ago. I'm told that things have improved since then, but I'm not so sure. Let me [-]rant[/-] share our experiences in the hope that others can either suggest better ways to finish the process, or at least avoid our pain.
As a retired naval officer with considerable bureaucratic nuclear power experience, married to another retired naval officer with even more executive-level experience, we assumed that we had what it takes to guide a teen through the process. We regret that assumption.
High-school seniors are usually encouraged to apply “early”, but everyone knows that most colleges have January application deadlines. Senioritis is highly contagious, though, so it's important to get them moving as quickly as possible. The high-school bureaucracy is also usually ill-equipped to handle the last-minute crush of applications, recommendations, and transcript mailings. All good reasons to finish in September what most teens wouldn't even start until late December. Probably just before heading out for the New Year's Eve party.
Our teen split her interests between USNA and NROTC. Since she's the legacy of two retired USNA grads, she's a twofer for a presidential appointment (safety school). However she's still “encouraged” to go through the process of obtaining a congressional appointment so that USNA can save the presidentials for [-]jocks who can throw a football 70 yards[/-] other suitable candidates who might not otherwise make the grade. So no time or labor is saved there, either, and those nomination requests are due to congressional staffs by October.
NROTC requires applying to five schools, and they'll award a scholarship to one school which may (might) be transferable (upon special request) to any of the other four. Applicants have been unofficially advised to make the most expensive school their #1 choice so that the scholarship will cover any of the five. (I doubt that this works in practice as well as it sounds in theory.) “Luckily” our kid's #1 choice, also her stretch school, is #2 in price and not too far away from the most expensive. Colleges are supposed to be needs-blind, but NROTC highly suspects that they give preference to teens who've already been approved for an NROTC scholarship. (No parent is willing to risk testing this suspicion.) The NROTC application is online but does not open until 1 June, and our teen submitted hers by the 20th. She seems to have a pretty good shot at a scholarship but as of early September, despite [-]the recruiter being behind quota[/-] promises of giving this a higher priority, the official word hasn't been received yet.
Many of today's colleges (service academies excepted) use the common college application at CommonApp.org. You would think that filling out one application for five colleges would be a one-time effort with five “submit” button clicks. You would be wrong. Each college has a (slightly different) supplemental app in addition to the main app, and each college uses a slightly different version of their essay questions. It requires ingenuity and creativity to write an essay that can stretch to cover all five, or else it requires a lot of effort to write five different essays. Most of the colleges also have printed/mailing forms in addition to the online applications.
To put this next concept as broadly and as tactfully as possible, you will be surprised at what a teen thinks is a good topic for a college application essay. If it's written well on the first draft, then you will be even more surprised. If your teen willingly accepts your suggested revisions and scampers off to incorporate them, then you'll be fantasizing. I think our spawn inherited my writing genes but it still took her an average of three drafts (and two weeks) for each essay-- along with other homework, extracurricular activities, and assorted high-school [-]musicals[/-] dramas.
To help thin the herd of wannabe collegians, her high school (class of 500+ seniors, so far) requires that all applications be routed through their office. This includes a transcript request, a counselor recommendation, and two teacher recommendations. Each requires a form, a checklist, and an information sheet to help the counselor remember which whatsername they're recommending as an outstanding student. This implies that the counselor is sending official transcripts to six different addresses-- all in the snail mail stamped “official transcript”, and none over any of the school's online grading/transcript website systems. Even if your teen's chosen college is using an online system, the high school is almost certain to be using an incompatible online system.
Our teen took a couple of high-school classes that offered dual credit for local community colleges. You would think that the two college transcripts could be included in her high-school transcript. Wrong again! She's contacting two community colleges for her transcripts. More “official transcript” snail-mail.
Stretch schools are tough to get into, and our teen is in the lower third of their freshmen demographics. In her favor, the school is expanding and they've indicated that they want more well-rounded students (especially women engineers!). However the conventional wisdom for this situation is to apply “early decision”. This is reported to raise the probability by 10-15%, with the understanding that if the teen is accepted by the ED school (usually by the end of December) then they'll immediately drop their applications to all other schools. Note that this timing does not allow a teen to apply to an ED school, learn their decision, and then have enough time to snapshot their applications to alternate choices. Nope, she has to apply to six schools and then wait for the early one to render the other five irrelevant.
So now our teen is tracking a counselor's transcript-mailing request, a counselor's recommendation request, two teacher recommendations, and two community-college transcript requests. When this first college package is launched, she has five more waiting in the tubes or on the reloads. You veteran parents know how that's going to turn out.
Once she finished submitting the first application, she was informed that it's a good idea to “volunteer” for a local alumni interview. (Thanks for the name, Htown Harry, we're going to use it!) We should probably add four more and then add in the congressional nomination interviews as well. Luckily she's already finished both NROTC interviews.
I just can't wait to see the forms she has to fill out for the military's medical entrance exam. Turns out I've been waiting over 30 years to show her what mine look like.
Our teen made a five-minute local TV short for winning a Kumon math award. She has a cool interview on DVD that totally sells her accomplishments, and I'm not alluding to the application tactics used by the character in “Legally Blonde”. But none of the applications even mention DVDs, let alone YouTube, so the best we can come up with is a “supplemental” cover letter and snail mail. Six times.
By the way, if your teen is looking for high SAT scores then that might require at least two attempts and a confidence-boosting prep class. (In our teen's case it required a little more, but you get the idea.) Some colleges also require special subject “SAT II” tests, which also may have minimum score requirements. If you're charting out the SAT & SAT II dates and allowing for multiple attempts, your teen should take the PSAT as a sophomore (great practice) and then take the first SAT the spring of sophomore year. They may have to take it again the spring of their junior year anyway because some colleges want the SAT score to be less than a year old at the time of application.
I haven't even added up the SAT fees, prep course fees, counselor's transcript-mailing fees, and college application fees. Were you planning to walk your teen on any of those hot teen campuses that they've admired on the college websites? Better start planning those summer vacations (and spring/fall breaks) right after 9th grade. (Can't interfere with driver's ed classes, either!) By the time the schools are selected and applied for, it can add up to a fifth year's tuition.
All of that came to a head this week, when our teen was about 70%-80% complete with all areas of the common app but not nearly finished with any of them. We put together a “goals list”, a deadline, and a Labor-Day-weekend liberty lockdown plan. Motivation soared inversely in proportion to morale, but this morning she pushed all the “submit” buttons on school #1. She escaped in the car shortly after that and swears that she'll be home before her driver's-license curfew. Because now it's time to study for the SAT IIs (in only 35 days) and to write three congressional nomination letters!
State U is beginning to look like a pretty good idea after all...
As a retired naval officer with considerable bureaucratic nuclear power experience, married to another retired naval officer with even more executive-level experience, we assumed that we had what it takes to guide a teen through the process. We regret that assumption.
High-school seniors are usually encouraged to apply “early”, but everyone knows that most colleges have January application deadlines. Senioritis is highly contagious, though, so it's important to get them moving as quickly as possible. The high-school bureaucracy is also usually ill-equipped to handle the last-minute crush of applications, recommendations, and transcript mailings. All good reasons to finish in September what most teens wouldn't even start until late December. Probably just before heading out for the New Year's Eve party.
Our teen split her interests between USNA and NROTC. Since she's the legacy of two retired USNA grads, she's a twofer for a presidential appointment (safety school). However she's still “encouraged” to go through the process of obtaining a congressional appointment so that USNA can save the presidentials for [-]jocks who can throw a football 70 yards[/-] other suitable candidates who might not otherwise make the grade. So no time or labor is saved there, either, and those nomination requests are due to congressional staffs by October.
NROTC requires applying to five schools, and they'll award a scholarship to one school which may (might) be transferable (upon special request) to any of the other four. Applicants have been unofficially advised to make the most expensive school their #1 choice so that the scholarship will cover any of the five. (I doubt that this works in practice as well as it sounds in theory.) “Luckily” our kid's #1 choice, also her stretch school, is #2 in price and not too far away from the most expensive. Colleges are supposed to be needs-blind, but NROTC highly suspects that they give preference to teens who've already been approved for an NROTC scholarship. (No parent is willing to risk testing this suspicion.) The NROTC application is online but does not open until 1 June, and our teen submitted hers by the 20th. She seems to have a pretty good shot at a scholarship but as of early September, despite [-]the recruiter being behind quota[/-] promises of giving this a higher priority, the official word hasn't been received yet.
Many of today's colleges (service academies excepted) use the common college application at CommonApp.org. You would think that filling out one application for five colleges would be a one-time effort with five “submit” button clicks. You would be wrong. Each college has a (slightly different) supplemental app in addition to the main app, and each college uses a slightly different version of their essay questions. It requires ingenuity and creativity to write an essay that can stretch to cover all five, or else it requires a lot of effort to write five different essays. Most of the colleges also have printed/mailing forms in addition to the online applications.
To put this next concept as broadly and as tactfully as possible, you will be surprised at what a teen thinks is a good topic for a college application essay. If it's written well on the first draft, then you will be even more surprised. If your teen willingly accepts your suggested revisions and scampers off to incorporate them, then you'll be fantasizing. I think our spawn inherited my writing genes but it still took her an average of three drafts (and two weeks) for each essay-- along with other homework, extracurricular activities, and assorted high-school [-]musicals[/-] dramas.
To help thin the herd of wannabe collegians, her high school (class of 500+ seniors, so far) requires that all applications be routed through their office. This includes a transcript request, a counselor recommendation, and two teacher recommendations. Each requires a form, a checklist, and an information sheet to help the counselor remember which whatsername they're recommending as an outstanding student. This implies that the counselor is sending official transcripts to six different addresses-- all in the snail mail stamped “official transcript”, and none over any of the school's online grading/transcript website systems. Even if your teen's chosen college is using an online system, the high school is almost certain to be using an incompatible online system.
Our teen took a couple of high-school classes that offered dual credit for local community colleges. You would think that the two college transcripts could be included in her high-school transcript. Wrong again! She's contacting two community colleges for her transcripts. More “official transcript” snail-mail.
Stretch schools are tough to get into, and our teen is in the lower third of their freshmen demographics. In her favor, the school is expanding and they've indicated that they want more well-rounded students (especially women engineers!). However the conventional wisdom for this situation is to apply “early decision”. This is reported to raise the probability by 10-15%, with the understanding that if the teen is accepted by the ED school (usually by the end of December) then they'll immediately drop their applications to all other schools. Note that this timing does not allow a teen to apply to an ED school, learn their decision, and then have enough time to snapshot their applications to alternate choices. Nope, she has to apply to six schools and then wait for the early one to render the other five irrelevant.
So now our teen is tracking a counselor's transcript-mailing request, a counselor's recommendation request, two teacher recommendations, and two community-college transcript requests. When this first college package is launched, she has five more waiting in the tubes or on the reloads. You veteran parents know how that's going to turn out.
Once she finished submitting the first application, she was informed that it's a good idea to “volunteer” for a local alumni interview. (Thanks for the name, Htown Harry, we're going to use it!) We should probably add four more and then add in the congressional nomination interviews as well. Luckily she's already finished both NROTC interviews.
I just can't wait to see the forms she has to fill out for the military's medical entrance exam. Turns out I've been waiting over 30 years to show her what mine look like.
Our teen made a five-minute local TV short for winning a Kumon math award. She has a cool interview on DVD that totally sells her accomplishments, and I'm not alluding to the application tactics used by the character in “Legally Blonde”. But none of the applications even mention DVDs, let alone YouTube, so the best we can come up with is a “supplemental” cover letter and snail mail. Six times.
By the way, if your teen is looking for high SAT scores then that might require at least two attempts and a confidence-boosting prep class. (In our teen's case it required a little more, but you get the idea.) Some colleges also require special subject “SAT II” tests, which also may have minimum score requirements. If you're charting out the SAT & SAT II dates and allowing for multiple attempts, your teen should take the PSAT as a sophomore (great practice) and then take the first SAT the spring of sophomore year. They may have to take it again the spring of their junior year anyway because some colleges want the SAT score to be less than a year old at the time of application.
I haven't even added up the SAT fees, prep course fees, counselor's transcript-mailing fees, and college application fees. Were you planning to walk your teen on any of those hot teen campuses that they've admired on the college websites? Better start planning those summer vacations (and spring/fall breaks) right after 9th grade. (Can't interfere with driver's ed classes, either!) By the time the schools are selected and applied for, it can add up to a fifth year's tuition.
All of that came to a head this week, when our teen was about 70%-80% complete with all areas of the common app but not nearly finished with any of them. We put together a “goals list”, a deadline, and a Labor-Day-weekend liberty lockdown plan. Motivation soared inversely in proportion to morale, but this morning she pushed all the “submit” buttons on school #1. She escaped in the car shortly after that and swears that she'll be home before her driver's-license curfew. Because now it's time to study for the SAT IIs (in only 35 days) and to write three congressional nomination letters!
State U is beginning to look like a pretty good idea after all...
Like your children, I never showed them to my parents, either. Honestly I did not even mention my parents (too embarrassing as a teen to even admit that I HAD parents). I spent hours writing each essay and wrote each a little bit differently because I was scared that the colleges might compare them! 
