Your soon-to-be college student will be responsible for making their own life choices and structuring their daily schedules very soon. It may be difficult, but it is important that parents resist the temptation to direct and manage the college search and application process. Instead, offer guidance and assistance while letting them do the bulk of the work, as this helps cultivate independence and self-agency.
High school students may begin doing some preliminary research on colleges as early as 10th grade or perhaps even sooner. During the summer heading into 11th grade, their college search should ramp up. It all begins with creating a long list of colleges that should be gradually whittled down into a shortlist of schools that the student will apply to.
You can make suggestions along the way, and check in from time to time to see how the search process is going. For instance, you might make suggestions on specific colleges based on your son or daughter’s area of interest, intended major, career goals or religion.
Generally, students should begin going on campus tours during the summer prior to 11th grade and continue through the summer prior to 12th grade. (Fall of 12th grade is college application season.) This part of the college search process does require more parental involvement.
Heading into the summer prior to 11th grade, sit down and have a talk with your child about their shortlist of colleges. Identify a handful of the top schools that the family will visit. (Ideally, your student’s shortlist should include some “reach” schools and some “safety” schools ranked according to your student’s likelihood of admittance. Try to visit a mixture of these.)
Depending on the locations of the schools on the list, it may be worth your while to plan a big road trip that will allow the family to visit a bunch of them at once. It can be tough to visit schools that are very far away; consider virtual visits for these if in-person tours are not possible.
If interested, you can schedule an in-person tour here at GCU to see the student life on campus. We also have live virtual tours if that is easier for you to learn more about GCU and what we have to offer.
Remind your student to prepare for the campus tour and information sessions in advance, such as by:
- Researching points of interest to visit on and near the campus
- Developing a list of thoughtful questions to ask
- Preparing for (and scheduling) campus interviews
Your student should arrive on campus ready to take lots of notes and pictures to review later during the enrollment decision-making process.
Most application deadlines are set in stone, so this is another part of the college admissions process that you’ll want to get more involved with. Ensure your child has a list of all of the relevant deadlines and is on track to meet them.
Although your son or daughter should do the work of filling out applications and writing personal statements, parenting college students can call for some oversight. You’ll want to review everything to ensure that your student has put their best foot forward and that their application materials contain no typos or grammatical errors.
