Applying to College

A Lightbulb Moment
In addition to my three one year olds, I have a seventeen year old stepson. He has spent summers and vacations with me since he was five so my concerns and cares for him have been that of a second mother or as I like to call it - THE MOTHER OF THE NEW YORK HOUSE. He is at that awful stage where he knows his future is going to unfold in a short time and doesn't really want it to happen. He is fighting it tooth and nail. He is a baby yet - not much more mature than the girlies in some ways - but he is living in a grown man's body. It is confusing for me in talking to him. I can only imagine how confusing it is for him.

Since his entry to the ninth grade, his Dad and I have been trying to get him to pay attention to school and start to think about what he needs to do to go to a good college. We are perhaps overzealous in this matter but that is a function of how over-educated we are. He went through high school doing as much as he had to in order to get by, despite getting the riot act read to him regularly by his father and myself. It was part laziness, part fear of success, part 'its-not-cool-to-be-smart' and part something else that I still do not understand. For me it was frustrating and painful to see someone with so much potential avoiding success. Well, this past year he finally woke up - a bit late I would say, but better late than never. So he now knows that his grades the first trimester have to really shine - There will be no - "Pass me, I'm a senior" or taking jewelry making to finish up high school. He has a full course load.



He arrived for probably his last summer vacation with us in June and has spent the summer eating, sleeping (there should be an Olympic event in Beijing just for him), working out at the gym, playing hockey in a local men's league(he managed to arrange this from his other home in the midwest, proving that he is very capable when he wants to be), listening to his iPod, and watching TV. Yes, I described the characature teenager. I don't remember being like this but I guess I must have been...



All summer we have been pushing him to make his penultimate list of college choices, so he can start making application before he goes back to school. We explained that applying to college can be a full time job and since he has left himself in the position of having to work hard the trimester when the applications need to be done, he should get an early start. This of course has been met with major push back from him. We hired an essay coach to help him with his essays. That was met with a fight but after he spoke to her, he realized that maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all. So at least he has started the essays.

This morning he mentioned how fast the summer has passed - that it was almost August. That clicked in my head that college applications are usually available August 1 for the following year in order to give applicants 3 months to fill out the application by the Nov 1 deadline for early decision. I suggested that he just open the application files at the list of schools he has selected and fill in the forms. It takes a whole lot of time even with the Common Application to fill out your name, address, school name and address, parents names, etc. for more than one or two schools. His list is about 7 -10 schools for now. He kept insisting that he couldn't do that until he completed his first trimester because he wanted to show the schools that he could do better and was applying himself. This battle has been waging since June when he arrived here in NY. Finally, I showed him on the common app website and on another college website that he could enter the information without sending his grades. I had to clearly state that it would be illegal for his High School to send a copy of his transcript without him specifically requesting that they send his grades. In this information age, he thought that his information would be laid bare to all the schools instantly once he opened an online application dialogue. This was his lightbulb moment...it was only when I read him the directions from the websites that he finally agreed that I was right. He COULD fill out the forms without having his transcript sent.
I feel like my battle has been won but I am still exhausted...