What is good advice to give to my college bound sister?

Continue letting her know you are always going to be there for her…......... like you are now !

She should certainly visit her top 3 schools , if possible….......

Follow up with her…......

She doesn’t have to be so terribly quick to pick a major. There are plenty of gen-eds to be gotten out of the way during her Freshman year, and she can take a couple of 100 or 200 series business courses to see how she likes them.

Those are both great schools! I hope you’re enjoying Quinnipiac.

What makes or breaks the decision should be how happy she feels to be there. She should visit the campuses if possible. If not spend lots of time on their websites, hopefully they have student websites as well. If you hate your school then your academics will suffer. If you love your school and they only have a mediocre program then at least you will have a good time and your grades will be great so you’ll have better grades.

Also she doesn’t need to choose a major right away. Even if she does let her know it is okay to switch. The average college student switches majors three times within their college career.

Your sister should get her essay peer-reviewed by as many people as possible and take their suggestions seriously. Also she should show passion in her essay for whatever she is writing about, especially passion about going to college and/or pursuing a career. An essay isn’t just about your writing skills but it is also about showing that you are ready for college.

@pdworkin I do thanks. It has its ups and downs but no college is going to be perfect.
@RedPowerLady I’ll tell her about the essay, thanks.

@everyone- thanks I’ll tell her all these things, I just feel like sometimes I’m not getting through. I’m glad she’s looking at Emerson and QU but she keeps talking about how she wants to go to Georgia (we live in Maine) and won’t mind not coming home.. How can I steer her away from this choice? I know if she ends up going chances are she won’t like it, she never goes away to even sleep at friends houses, how will she go a plane trip south and survive? In the end it’s not my decision but I don’t want her to hate it..

She may feel a stronger need to make a break in order to establish her own identity.

@sevenfourteen That is so common for teens to feel the need to get as far away as possible. It is typically much harder on them when they do so because of lack of support system. It is just this feeling of getting away. Maybe you could emphasize how she will be independent even at the other schools. But better yet is find a way to let her travel to the campus so she can get the feel of just how far away it is.

An essay is a kind of personal statement, obviously, so tell her not to write anything too generic. At the same time, different schools look for different qualities in students. One good idea is to visit the websites of the schools she’s interested in and read their mission statements. Every school has something like this.
Doing so will not only help her learn which schools are right for her, but when she’s applying she can also write a separate essay that emphasizes the values of the mission statement of each school to which she applies. In other words, she’ll kind of be catering to each school’s values individually.
If I remember correctly, Northwestern says a lot about diversity in its “About” sections. So, e.g., if she applies to Northwestern it would probably be helpful to relate certain experiences in her life that stress the importance of diversity for her.
Still, there needs to be a balance. Don’t make it obvious, don’t brownnose, etc. And most importantly, don’t let it become impersonal.

As a recent grad-

I would say that as cliché as it is, maximizing your experience is key. You probably only get to go to college once (and save grad school, once should be enough). But its personal. I for one, wish I had done some things I never made time for- wrote for the school paper, gone to a couple of football games, etc.

Peer reviewed essays are fine, teacher reviewed essays are better. After all, they for sure know what they’re talking about, her peers are potentially clueless and more than capable of giving bad advice.

make sure she knows everything about her campus’ library.