How can parents help their kids get into college?

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

My oldest son is finally in High School. He's always been a bright kid, but his grades haven't really been that good. This summer, I pretty much scared the heck out of him. I told him that if he didn't get good grades in his Freshman year that he could potentially kill his chances of getting into a good University. That fear has worked so far. He is now doing his homework every day and he is already scoring higher on tests like History than ever before. His biggest problem is that his course load is so challenging that he simply forgets to either do or turn in homework. So, what I have been doing is helping him on Sunday nights to plan his week and prepare his daily to do list. Every morning before school, I check that he did his homework and has it in his folder for turning it in. When he gets home, I check with him that he knows what he's got to do and has time to do it given his extracurricular load.

The reason for this post is to find out what others are doing to help their high school kids get into college. It is a LOT harder than it was when I applied and went to school. It is so hard to get in now, I am not sure that I could even get into my alma mater. At a minimum, I would have had to do more to prepare myself for the application process.

[wackymother Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close wackymother]

By helping him with his study skills, you are really helping him a lot. Does he have an assignment planner? Keeping one is very important.

Encourage him to find a couple of extracurricular activities he really enjoys and is interested in, things he can participate in for all four years of HS and carry into college with him. The idea is that each year he will take on more responsibility within the club, moving into a leadership role.

[Elan Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Elan]

Teach him to be 6'5", 220lbs and run a 4.4 40.

[funtime2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close funtime2]

As a mom and teacher, you are doing the right things. I would suggest you get a copy of the college applications that he is thinking about applying to so he can see what is going to be required. Also keep a folder and label it by school year. On the outside list activities, honors, things that he attends, awards, volunteer hours, jobs, anything that needs to be noted. Inside the folder you can put newspaper clippings of him, certificates, report cards, etc you may even (for fun) want to keep a running record of $ spent for different school things, events, etc. When you get ready to make his student resume you will have all the information at hand. I would also encourage him to beginning taking the SAT at the end of his Freshman, and Sophmore year. Then when he takes it as a Junior it will not be such a shock. This is what my son did and it did pay off. He could see how much he had learned from year to year - what a reward!
All of this paid off from my son as he has started his senior year with an LOA from the Naval Academy in hand!
Remember the colleges are looking for a well rounded student, not just one that is book smart, but one that can be involved in other things too.
As a parent if you can be on a review board for scholarships at a local school, college or organization - it would give you some insights too.
Hope this helps and good luck. The next 4 years will go by quickly.

[jgirvine Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jgirvine]

I ran the scholarship website for our high school for several years till the school board so royally pissed me off I quit. During that time, I got asked this a great deal.

1. You are on the right track. Help him. Don't do his work for him, but do as you are doing, sit down with him and help him LEARN how to do, what he needs to do.

2. You, yourself, think about how you can wean him of your help. By the time he leaves for college he needs to have mastered the self motivation as well as the self regulation. Set goals for him. Possibly continuing as you are this school year, next year, tell him ok, every Friday night I need to see an outline of what we did last year in the way of weekly planning. Then go from there.

3. Getting into college, as well as getting scholarships is a 4 leg stool. Only one of those legs is grades. Leg one - Grades. Leg two - Participation and Leadership. Identify NOW something he is interested in and can join, participate, and by his senior year maybe hold a leadership role. Leg three - work. If it is just in the summer, just something that shows working. Leg four - volunteer work. Once again, does not have to be out there saving the world. One of my daughters signed up to do meals on wheels once a month.

You are off to a good start. The parents who take an ACTIVE interest have kids that are so far ahead of the game.

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Where I live, the top students take the honors courses, AP or IB, so that their grades are the highest in the class. A non-honors class has a maximum grade point of 4.0. A honors class has a maximum grade point of 5.0.

If a child fails to take any or enough honors classes, they will never be in the top echelon of their graduating class, even if they have a 4.0 average.

These honor courses generally have the best teachers but have course requirements, homework, and projects that exceeded any college courses I had. If your son can do well in these, he will most likely be prepared for college.

The other approach is to have your son score as high as possible on SAT or ACT tests. High scores on these tests can offset somewhat an average grade point average.

Obviously, you know the better he does grade wise, the more choices he will have. Having a very good freshman year GPA goes a long way to having a good GPA at graduation.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Teach him to be 6'5", 220lbs and run a 4.4 40.

This is the best advice I've heard yet.

[GeoPatSK Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close GeoPatSK]

We tried to get our daughters thinking about college choices early. As Mike H. suggests, we encouraged them to take all honor courses in HS (and in senior year AP courses). We also encouraged them, verbally, supplying transportation, and by attending events, to get involved in extra curricular activities and varsity sports, because we believed that the need to be well rounded.

Starting in spring of their sophomore year we brought them to the local college fairs (NACAC Spring National College Fairs Schedule and Information ) and we set up 3 weeks during the summer between sophomore year and junior year to visit colleges they found interesting. They each visited at least 20 colleges with in 250 miles of our home. In their junior year's we encourage then to have overnight visits at their top choices.

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

Jim I am the mother of a very, very bright child who likes to procrastinate or better yet not bother to do his homework. No matter how many times I stress that homework assignments count as +/- 20% of his grades.

He tests well and has relied on great marks to carry him thru so far. The mediocore scores on his middle school reports cards and constant harassing of ME didn't bother him at all.

He has just started highschool and for some reason realises he is in the "get a great college education or go to BOCES and become a tradesman" years have begun.( Not that there is anything wrong with becoming an electrician, plumber, auto mechanic. Everytime I pay a bill for these things I think he may have a safety net. ) Thankfully he is, at the moment, being enthusiastic about highschool, football and homework assignments. I pray daily that this sudden change in demeanor is for real.

Good luck with yours.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Boca,
Sounds like you are on the right track, by helping him get his study skills up. My kids are older now, one is done with college and working and the other in 2nd year of law school, but I know when there were in school trying to get them to be consistent and not let things slide till they get overwelming seemed to help a lot.
Also, I know from experience with my boys that as someone else said, colleges are looking for more than just good grades. My older boy got froze out of one of the schools he wanted because while his acedemics were great he didn't have much else on his resume and that hurt him. He ended up doing fine but not getting in that one school upset him then. I think it is even more competitive today and they look even harder at the extra stuff that is on the kids resume. My younger son played hockey and although he was not D1 material I think doing team sports helped build his resume.
Keep doing what you are doing and encourage him to get involved in other stuff at school.

[Luanne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Luanne]

I'm just very curious about what the criteria is that you all are using for a "good university" or "good college"?

[joycapecod Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close joycapecod]

This is the best advice I've heard yet.

And if that doesn't work, stretch him to 7'2" and teach him to shoot the 3. We could only get our DS tall enough for point...but it did help. Of course his academics were all high honors from a very strong academic school.

Joy

[joycapecod Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close joycapecod]

Luanne, I think it depends on what the student wants. Different universities and colleges have different "specialties." DS wanted to go to Northeastern in Boston, his back up was Boston University and his "I'll go if there's no other choice" school was University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was interested in Journalism; Northeastern has an internship program and fortunately he found out early Journalism was not his cup of tea. He changed to marketing and loved it.


Joy

[Luanne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Luanne]

Luanne, I think it depends on what the student wants.

Joy, I totally agree. I just wondering since the original post was talking about a good university. I know my younger dd has drawn up her list of what would be a "good match" for her based on the area(s) she wants to go into, the school environment she's looking for, and the geographic area where she'd like to be.

[3kids4me Super Moderator and Super Mom Find all posts View Profile Close 3kids4me]

My son is a junior this year.

Here's what I've heard. Not sure how much is true.

1. Many colleges actually don't count freshman year in the GPA calc mix.

2. For state schools, it's more about the numbers (GPA and SAT or ACT) than anything else. The extracurricular activities, sports, outside job, "unusual skills" are much more important in the private school arena when being considered for acceptance.

3. I concur with the advice to take the SAT a few times to get used to it. My son took it at age 13 for a program he was in, and then again at age 14 to see if he could also qualify for verbal courses in the program (the first time he only qualified for math). Even between those two years, his scores jumped dramatically, I'm sure based more on test taking experience than an actual increase in knowledge.

4. Try the ACT too, especially if your kid is into science.

Sound like everyone is off to a good start this year!