A Mother Returns to the College Search, With Daughter No. 2 in Tow It's hard to believe that last month I found myself sitting, again, in the tiered classroom of my local high school, listening to a presentation about precollege testing. Wasn't it yesterday that I plunked down in the same chair, preparing for my oldest child's journey through the college admissions process? That child is now a college sophomore, working her tail off, adjusted and happy. And now I'm at it again, with child No. As I entered the evening meeting, run by the head of the school's guidance department in collaboration with a representative from a local college test prep course, a couple of people asked me what I was doing there. "Haven't you been through this already?" they asked. Yes, I had been. But the reality is that my second child - also a daughter and now a high school junior - is in many ways a different one from her older sister. What applied to Nicole does not equal what applies to Emily, so I'm trying to treat Emily's journey with a fresh, albeit experienced, perspective. The next meeting, a few weeks later, was for juniors and their parents - a chance for the guidance team to introduce an auditorium filled with fairly uninterested 16-year-olds (who mostly opted to sit with their friends) and their wide-eyed parents to the coming year's college preparation schedule. They covered the nuts and bolts of the Naviance system and went through the statistics of recent graduating classes and what percentage of students went to schools big versus small, public versus private, and by region. At one point, I caught my daughter starting a game of Unblock Me on her smartphone and gave her the "are you kidding me?" look, to which she perked up for 15 seconds before looking bored again. My own focus began to wane after a few more PowerPoint slides and I finally whispered in her ear, "Do you want to go?" She responded by jumping out of her seat to exit the auditorium. Like her sister, Emily is a diligent student; I know much of her motivation to leave the meeting was to go home and finish her homework. But I think she also feels that because her parents have been through the college process already with one child, why would we need to bother hearing it again. What Emily will soon to come to realize - and it may be a rude awakening - is that this will be Emily's journey. While her parents are here to support her, she will have to be responsible for the legwork. A social kid who is involved in school and plays a fall sport, Emily will have to find the time to comb through the college guidebooks and Web sites and then, her father and I will help her narrow her choices from the 4,000-plus schools out there. Every child is different, and I imagine it's those differences that perhaps keep this at-times grueling process fresh and interesting for parents. Emily's older sister knew early on that she was interested in a small, liberal arts college and that she would most likely major in psychology. Like most high school juniors, Emily is unsure of what type or size college she wants to attend and has no idea what she wants to study. Nor should she. That's what the college search process is all about. Researching. Exploring. Discovering. To offer your thoughts on what Ms. Gerszberg has written, or to share similar observations, please use the comment box below. To read more by her, click here.