Guides
Straight answers to the questions families ask in 9th and 10th grade — including the ones where the honest answer is that nothing needs doing yet.
When should you start planning for college?
Why 9th and 10th grade are the years that decide what your options look like later — and what is actually worth doing in them.
How many AP classes should a 9th or 10th grader take?
A straight answer for the early years of high school, and why course rigor is judged in context rather than counted.
What do colleges look for in extracurricular activities?
Why depth beats variety, what a long-running activity signals, and how to think about activities in 9th and 10th grade.
A 9th grade college planning timeline
What is genuinely worth doing in 9th grade, term by term — and the much longer list of things that can wait.
A 10th grade college planning checklist
The year to build depth and take a first honest look at requirements, without moving 11th grade work forward.
Do you need a private college counselor?
An honest look at what private counseling provides, what it costs, and which parts of it most families can do themselves.
Rather skip the reading?
The free profile read takes about three minutes and shows what your student's current information says about the colleges they are targeting. It is the shortest route to the same planning questions these guides work through.