Who makes the final decision?

Somewhere near the start, have a plain conversation about who actually gets to make the final call. It's easy to leave fuzzy, and then in March, when a real decision is on the table, you find that your family never agreed on whose decision it was. Settling it early spares everyone that fight, and it lets your student know where they stand instead of being blindsided at the last minute.

There's no single right model, and every family lands somewhere different. Sometimes the student decides outright. Sometimes the student decides, but within a limit you name out loud, like a school only working if enough indexed or flexible tuition comes through. Sometimes the parenting adults make the call. And sometimes the adults narrow it to a short list everyone can live with, and the student chooses from there. Any of these can be healthy. What isn't healthy is leaving it unspoken until the decisions land.

It helps to be honest about why this is hard for a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old. By the time these same kids are choosing a college, they'll have a clearer sense of what they want and how to weigh it. Right now, most of them have never chosen a school in their lives. The school was chosen for them, or they simply stayed where they were, or followed a feeder. Choosing is a skill, and this may be the first time they're using it. That's an argument both for giving them a real voice and for not handing them the full weight of a decision they aren't yet equipped to carry alone.

So tell your student plainly what's theirs to decide and what isn't, and why. A student who knows their say is real, even if it's a say within limits, walks into March steadier than one who assumed it was all up to them, or assumed they had no voice at all. When the offers come and it's time to make the final call, you'll be glad the ground rules were set back when nothing was on the line.