Preparing for high school and college

[mmsmom]

DS is in 8th and I went to first college meeting that his school offered last year. My takeaway from that meeting was to let this process be led by the child. They had seniors come in to talk about their experiences and they all said the process caused a lot of friction between them and their parents and it was most helpful when the parents helped only when asked to. However, the big caveat to this is it’s a private school where they have a college counselor assigned to them starting in 9th grade and that person holds their hand through the process. We have tried to enforce with DS that now is the time to develop good habits and study skills that will allow him to be successful in high school. We try to encourage participation in varying activities and sports but let him choose as long as it is something. The only thing I have been involved in is making sure he is on the right math track. I feel it’s the only thing that has to be figured out early on as there are only 2 paths to get to calculus senior year. Right now DS is interested in engineering and for that he will need calculus in HS. I know that may change but I don’t want him to be in a position of not being able to pursue something because he hasn’t taken the right classes.

I don’t know if a college counselor is an option for you but my friends who have used them all day they were a huge help in navigating the process. We would definitely go that route if it wasn’t provided by school. But either way definitely take advantage of the counselors at your school. They have a wealth of knowledge and can be very helpful... the time they can spend wil just depend on size of school.

[georgiegirl]

DD is in 9th grade, and we have just started talking about college. DD is highly motivated, a great student, and she wants to go to a selective, competitive college, followed by med school. DH and I think she’d be happier at a slightly less competitive college, but we are trying to research which colleges have the best med school acceptable rates. DD isn’t sure what she wants in terms of size and location, but she is 100% certain she wants to leave the state (and probably the Midwest in general.). Her high school is good about planning for classes later in high school, and she has already mapped out her classes for the next 3 years. Funny thing is that she prefers to take a bunch of science classes over random electives. I had to talk her out of taking too many AP classes at once. Her school is restrictive and doesn’t allow 10th graders to take AP classes, unless they are on the extra accelerated math track and take calculus AB AP sophomore year (which DD will do). She’s a competitive swimmer, but not interested in that many other extracurricular activities. She will do the requisite volunteer hours to get the district award for service. I guess we should start visiting colleges soon. She has her heart set on Sanford, but I doubt that would happen.


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[KpbS]

DD is in 9th grade, and we have just started talking about college. DD is highly motivated, a great student, and she wants to go to a selective, competitive college, followed by med school. DH and I think she’d be happier at a slightly less competitive college, but we are trying to research which colleges have the best med school acceptable rates. DD isn’t sure what she wants in terms of size and location, but she is 100% certain she wants to leave the state (and probably the Midwest in general.). Her high school is good about planning for classes later in high school, and she has already mapped out her classes for the next 3 years. Funny thing is that she prefers to take a bunch of science classes over random electives. I had to talk her out of taking too many AP classes at once. Her school is restrictive and doesn’t allow 10th graders to take AP classes, unless they are on the extra accelerated math track and take calculus AB AP sophomore year (which DD will do). She’s a competitive swimmer, but not interested in that many other extracurricular activities. She will do the requisite volunteer hours to get the district award for service. I guess we should start visiting colleges soon. She has her heart set on Sanford, but I doubt that would happen.


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If she is serious about going to medical school, the best advice is study hard and choose the most affordable college you can so you can graduate med school without hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. It's a long road and the difference in the quality of life getting your first job out of residency with minimal/no debt versus hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is huge. Seriously. Where do you do your undergrad work, and even get your medical degree will not matter nearly as much as where you land your residency and what your grades/fellowship prospects are.

[essnce629]

If she is serious about going to medical school, the best advice is study hard and choose the most affordable college you can so you can graduate med school without hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. It's a long road and the difference in the quality of life getting your first job out of residency with minimal/no debt versus hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is huge. Seriously. Where do you do your undergrad work, and even get your medical degree will not matter nearly as much as where you land your residency and what your grades/fellowship prospects are.

100% agree. This is pretty much the advice over on the college boards for anyone interested in med school.

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[georgiegirl]

If she is serious about going to medical school, the best advice is study hard and choose the most affordable college you can so you can graduate med school without hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. It's a long road and the difference in the quality of life getting your first job out of residency with minimal/no debt versus hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is huge. Seriously. Where do you do your undergrad work, and even get your medical degree will not matter nearly as much as where you land your residency and what your grades/fellowship prospects are.

DH is a physician, and he agrees that we need to focus on how to get her into medical school. It’s so competitive that she’s not likely to have a choice of where to go. DH was lucky to get into his state medical school, so his loans were less than 1/2 of what they would have been if he had gone to a private medical school. Some of his friends did the MD/PhD thing to avoid med school loans. DD is hardworking, organized, and bright, and right now she’s open to guidance. While we do have resources to pay for college and medical school at the moment, who knows how things will change, and having to pay for three college/med school tuitions at once would be outside our comfort zone.


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[nfceagles]

100% agree. This is pretty much the advice over on the college boards for anyone interested in med school.

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This whole thread is making me anxious. My oldest is a sophomore but we haven’t done much of anything yet. Between not knowing what to do and the pandemic it sounds like we’re a bit behind. The pandemic is probably leveling the playing field and we’re not alone.

My DS is also interested in med school. What are “the college boards” and where would I find those? Thanks for all the wisdom shared.


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[essnce629]

What are “the college boards” and where would I find those?

Here's what I posted above:

There's lots of resources out there to become knowledgeable on the college admissions process. I've learned so much from both the private Facebook groups Grown and Flown Parents and Paying For College 101. For books, my favorites have been Colleges that Change Lives by Loren Pope and Who Gets In and Why by Jeffrey Selingo. For podcasts my favorite is Jeffrey Selingo's Future U.

For actual message boards there's College Confidential, but I prefer the Facebook groups.


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[Globetrotter]

I could go on about this for hours but I was trying to limit the college information since these are just middle schoolers LOL but one more thing I will say for now is - when you are ready- check out the college essay guy, Ethan Sawyer. He has something on almost everything. I made my kid watch his videos before writing his essays. He is fantastic! There’s also a podcast.
Sign up for his personal statement essay writing guide and so many other things. He has some great advice, like want to do if you get a deferral, etc.

[Globetrotter]

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[AnnieW625]

Dd1 is a freshman. To prepare her we had her visit the Catholic high school in our new area, and unfortunately due to covid there were no public high school orientations in our new area so it kind of made the decision easy for us. Had their not been covid I think she may have gotten a better feel for public school, but she does like the smaller environment (her school has 500 or so kids and the public high school has 2,500) and she is a good student so I told her that as long as she kept her grades up we would be okay sending her to Catholic high school. So far she has chosen a few service clubs to be a member of, but they haven’t been active much. She went to volleyball conditioning in October and November, but then the covid statistics got really bad here in late November and everything halted. She just started tennis conditioning two days a week and she has never played tennis before, but in our state there is more of a chance that there will be a tennis season vs. volleyball because of restrictions (tennis is a red tier sport and volleyball is an orange tier sport....yellow is the best tier). She just joined a Big Brothers/Big Sisters program where she will be paired with a local college student, and a large private university in LA is offering a college prep. program in their communications department this summer for free so she will be signing up for that as well.

College wise I am hoping to steer her towards the UC or CSU system or another state’s reasonably priced state university system because I agree that getting out of college without debt is very important. As much as I want my kids to go out of state I will not be paying upwards of $40k per year (before housing) for them to go somewhere like Oregon (even though we love the area). I have tried the Net Cost Calculator for two well known private universities in California and one (Stanford) gives more non income based merit aid than the other (USC) but tbh we haven’t really started looking yet. We have also mentioned the option of an ROTC program especially if she is interested in medicine (she is currently thinking of nursing) and going to medical training/school while part of the armed services. We are looking forward to being able to process all of this post covid. Good luck to all of those who haven’t been able to this year.

Course wise she is taking Honors English, and Geometry; she also wanted honors biology, but it didn’t work with her schedule. She will take calculus as a senior, which DH says is perfectly acceptable (he has an Mechanical Engineering degree and was only a few courses short of having a double major in math and engineering).

FWIW: a friend of mine from high school has an English degree from Cal and went to UCLA Med. School right out of 4 year university. He is now head of oncology at his hospital. My girls prior pediatrician had a minor in dance and was a psyche major, taught elementary school for two years and still became a pediatrician.

I am a big fan of letting my kids pick their own major. My parents did that for me and it made my college experience so much better. Granted I probably should’ve taken a few business classes when I was there or looked at business or sports management at the time because now looking back at things I would’ve been good at that, but overall I have never not been employed since I graduated even though I don’t work in my specific degree field.


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