It's that time of year when high school seniors have been notified whether they've been admitted to a college and now they have to decide where they're going to attend. It's my second time sitting in the parent chair (my first as a certified college counselor) and I have thoughts:
1) Early admission is awesome if your student is a strong candidate. I knew my younger son was a great candidate for merit scholarships because he had excellent grades and high test scores, and I was right. He got into many schools and received fantastic merit scholarship offers that are, frankly, necessary for us to be able to afford these schools. These early notifications of admission helped all of us breathe a little easier.
However, there are good reasons not to apply early. These include wanting senior year's first semester grades to be considered as part of the application, and not submitting rushed essays.
2) Not getting in is frustrating. It's baffling who gets in and who doesn't, even to college counselors. Students (including my own children) who I thought were shoe-ins have been waitlisted or even denied admission.
One California student is suing the UC system alleging that the only reason he didn't get in was race. I don't see how he can prevail, though. He was denied admission at the five most competitive campuses, and they all review applications holistically. The lawyer in me says there's no way he can prove that the admissions committees had no reason other than race for not offering admission. Off the top of my head, I'd speculate that his essays were less than compelling and/or his activities were limited (the article mentions he founded a software company while still in high school, but doesn't mention anything else). Plus, the student's major, computer science, is consistently one of the most competitive majors to get in to.
There is no transparency in the college admissions process, so students never know why they weren't admitted. The article says the student's attorneys want to force the UCs into transparency. (So does the federal government.) I think transparency would be great, but even if they get it, I don't think they're going to find what they're looking for. Admissions officers constantly disagree about who to admit, and race doesn't have to come into it.
While I'd love to know why my kids and the students I've worked with weren't admitted to certain schools where I know they were strong candidates, I have to accept that I never will. And I can live with that, because they all got into other excellent schools and will thrive where they eventually end up.
3) You probably won't have to pay the full cost of attendance. This is almost certainly true if the cost of attendance is significantly more than your SAI (formerly known as the EFC). Even colleges that don't meet a student's full need will usually offer some need-based aid. And those merit scholarships I mentioned? They can make private schools cost less than state schools.
However, the changing DOE landscape and possible changes to federal aid availability will likely change things at the institutional level. There is a lot of uncertainty because of this. That means it's extra important to not only choose an affordable college but to make sure you understand your financial aid package and its components. This includes knowing what is required to maintain merit scholarships, how much of your package is need-based aid that might not be available in the future (contact the college's financial aid office), and what loans you might need to take out in order to graduate. (See Joe Messinger's thoughts about this too.)
4) There just isn't enough information about how to pay for college. The only reason I was prepared when my older child went to college was that I'd been educating myself for years. Affordability is as important a consideration in deciding where to apply for college as academic and social fit.
Families need to use net price calculators, take a good hard look at their finances, and have honest conversations about what's affordable. They also need to file the FAFSA in a timely manner, find out if there's any state aid available, and plan for how they're going to pay for college before their student commits to a school. Do some research - I just talked to a parent of a senior who had never heard of California's Middle Class Scholarship.
Admittedly, most people won't find this fun (I do, but I'm nerdy that way). But it's how families can make sure they can afford colleges that are a good fit for their student.
5) Make sure you understand what you're getting into if you take out student/family loans. The standard advice is to limit the total amount borrowed to what the student expects to earn in their first year after college. For example, if the student plans to be a teacher earning $60,000 right after graduation, they shouldn't borrow more than $60,000 during college. That's a total of $60,000, or $15,000 per year.
If parents are going to borrow money, they should make sure they're not sacrificing their own financial well-being to do so. You won't be able to borrow money to pay for your retirement, and you'll be paying back loans.
If you do decide to borrow money, be aware of the different types of loans available. In general, loans from the federal government will have the lowest interest rates. Direct subsidized loans will be interest-free while the student is still in college, so those should always be the first loans taken out.
With the changing economic and educational climate, I think it's worth considering taking out any subsidized loan while it's available if you think there's any chance you'll need to borrow money to pay for college. Hopefully, you'll be able to pay the loan back immediately upon graduation, so it won't have cost you anything and you'll have some extra breathing room in your finances.
6) Preparation for paying for college should start well before senior year of high school. In fact, I want to get elementary and middle school parents thinking about it, because they can open 529 accounts and save, if nothing else. (California's 529 program has offered free money for opening an account around May 29 in past years.)
Once a student enters high school, parents can start to estimate how much they can pay every month or year for college. This can help narrow choices - for instance, it might become clear that most out-of-state public colleges will be too expensive (those schools usually don't provide a lot of aid to out-of-state students). Or families might realize that a student isn't going to get a big enough scholarship at, say, USC (where the cost of attendance for 2025-26 is over $99,000 😮).
And as a student approaches senior year, families can make good use of net price calculators to guesstimate how much a particular college might cost their family. The more info a calculator asks for - such as GPA and test scores - the more accurate it's likely to be. As a student figures out which colleges are appealing, families can use net price calculators to refine their college list.
7) Some colleges understand how to use their portal better than others. If a college sends a student an email after they apply with instructions on how to create a portal account to check on the status of their application, the student should absolutely do so as it's the best way to ensure that all application materials have been received and to see the admission decision when it's available.
But there was one college my son decided not to attend, and he couldn't submit his decision in that original portal - they wanted him to create a university portal using a university email account, and that required multi-factor authentication ... in other words, a lot of effort just to say "no thank you." Needless to say, I could easily understand why students don't tell colleges they're not coming even when it's the right thing to do. (My son sent an email to the admissions office, asking them to withdraw his application. They haven't confirmed receipt, but I consider his responsibilities fulfilled.)
8) Colleges send a lot of emails. Email is the primary way colleges contact students, and they send important emails like requests for additional documents, decision notifications, financial aid award notifications, scholarship info and even info like reimbursement of travel expenses if you visit the college.
But colleges also send lots of emails that say "check this out" and "about our ___" and "did you know?" All of these emails go to the same email account that the important emails get sent to. One of the colleges my son got into in November sent a dozen emails that said "haven't heard from you yet, are you coming, not coming or do you need more info?" What he needed was time, to decide which of the schools that admitted him is the best fit.
Understandably, it's hard for a student to keep track of all these emails. So I highly recommend not just creating a free email account that's used just for college, but also forwarding those emails to a parent's account so the parent can help make sure students catch all the important emails.
9) It's hard to let the student drive the college decision process, but it's important to do so. I'll admit, I've struggled from the beginning with striking a balance between telling and listening. I have a lot of information to share, but he doesn't necessarily want to hear it. In all honesty, I'm still not quite sure how we came up with the list of colleges he ended up applying to, but I think it was a good mix of me saying "consider these schools" and him coming back with "I like these two but not the rest." At least, I hope that's how he remembers it, too.
Now I'm struggling not to pressure my son to tell me what he's thinking. He has over a month to make up his mind, and we still have three schools to visit. So I have to keep reminding myself that he can't make up his mind yet, and he doesn't have to tell me what he's thought so far.
Just as important, I keep reminding myself not to tell him what I'm thinking. We discuss facts, which is how we've eliminated several schools from his list - their cost of attendance (to us) is significantly higher that of other colleges he's gotten into. But my husband and I are both refraining from expressing opinions. Our son is the one who will be spending the next four years in college, and where he goes needs to be his choice.
Do you have questions or advice about college admissions?
