To manifest your child’s destiny, visit colleges as soon as you can.   Manifestation is to bring something you want into your life through attraction and belief: what you think will happen will happen.  I do not mean visiting colleges in the senior year of high school. I mean when your kid is around eight years old, start exposing the child to what colleges he can aspire to. Go on vacation to Connecticut and visit Yale; Madison Beach Hotel is close by and very relaxing (you can stay there for free with your Hilton weekend certificates; otherwise the hotel is quite pricey). Right now, if you apply for the Hilton Amex card, you can get 60,000 bonus points and a free weekend night certificate. Go to Boston on vacation and visit Harvard and MIT. While visiting the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, stop off at University of Pennsylvania. Show your kid what he can achieve with good grades. The Secret teaches us that we achieve what we set our minds to do. Therefore, we must show our kids what to focus on.

Showing your child a prestigious college unleashes the power of manifesting.  When my child was seven, we started visiting colleges.  Of course, we started with the best: Harvard.  Boston in the summer is gorgeous, and we toured Harvard with the rest of the tourists, some also had their young children in tow.  Another great tourist attraction in Boston is the plentiful lobsters and we had a great time there.  I still recall the delicious twin lobsters in the beautiful outdoor restaurant near the water.  The more you expose a child to the places you want her to go, the more it becomes familiar, and eventually it will be a goal within reach.  A child who has seen what is possible will work harder to get good grades, score well on standardized tests, participate in extra-curricular activities, whatever it takes to get into an elite school. 

Around the time of end of junior year of high school, you might consider visiting colleges you would like to apply to for demonstrating interest.  College admissions officers sometimes like to see demonstrated interest by prospective students before they make the decision to admit a student because they want to know the student will accept.  Because universities seek to improve their yield – or raise the number of students who accept admission offers – they look for demonstrated interest.  Further, some admissions officers have said that they would view it as a lack of interest on the student’s part if they lived close by and didn’t ever visit.  It would be wise to visit a college so you can see where you will be taking classes and the surrounding neighborhood.  Finally, visiting colleges can allow you to write a better and personalized “why us” essay, which is what colleges are looking for.