Spring College Choice Tips for Parents of High School Juniors
Last week I gave college choice tips for parents of high school seniors. This week, I am focusing on high school juniors and next week I will talk about sophomores.
High School Juniors
Senior year is right around the corner and that means college applications, scholarship applications, recommendation letters and lots of stress! As a parent, you can arm yourself now with the knowledge and tools to help guide your student through these processes. Here are some resources to help you keep everything under control.
- Preparation for senior year – Start with Parents of High School Juniors – Prepare for Senior Year!
- College visits – If you haven’t done enough college visits yet, now is the time to start. Read the posts in my College Visits category.
- College application essays and recommendation letters – Help your child prepare for application essays and recommendation letters. Essay Hell is a great website for college essay tips. For recommendation letters, read this article by Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz, Letters of Recommendation: The Real Icing on Your College Admissions Cake.
- Scholarship applications – Prepare to track scholarship applications using my free Scholarship Tracker, learn how to find great outside scholarships, and find out what it takes to win a full-ride/full-tuition scholarship.
- ACT/SAT Tests – If your student still needs to take (or retake) the ACT or SAT, you might consider test prep resources. I have a list of available ACT Test Prep Resources. If your student’s test scores have you worried, you might want to look into schools that don’t require ACT or SAT scores for admission. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing has published a great list of test optional schools.
Spring of Junior year is a great time to encourage your child to narrow down his or her college choice list to a manageable number of applications. Eight to ten is typically considered the maximum number for applying. If he or she is not ready to narrow down the list, now is the time to do what it takes to get there!