Anne Zelek has been preparing for college for years.

        She's challenged herself in advanced programs at Indian Hill's middle school and high school. She's maintained a high grade-point average. She's pursued other interests — mentoring a 9-year-old boy from Newport, serving in student government, playing cello in the Blue Ash Youth Symphony Orchestra and competing on the Indian Hill tennis team — all of which she recognizes will be good material for college applications.

COLLEGE PREP CALENDAR

Linda Grayman, guidance counselor for Walnut Hills High School, recommends this timeline for students preparing for college.    Freshman year     • Plan a strong four-year academic program.     • Get involved with activities outside school, such as sports, clubs and arts programs.    Sophomore year • Take the PSAT college preparatory test for practice.     • Maintain high grades.    Junior year     • Take the PSAT in the fall. Junior year PSAT scores do not count for college admission, butthey may qualify students for National Merit Scholarship awards.     • Begin compiling your resume for college applications.     • Start researching colleges to learn which offer majors, locations, sizes and prices that appeal to you.     • Plan a spring trip to look at schools.     • Take the SAT I or the ACT in the spring to get experience in taking the standardized tests.    Senior year     • Take the SAT I and/or II or the ACT in the fall.     • Narrow your choices of colleges.     • Send in college applications.     • For more extensive recommendations on what you should be doing to prepare for college, visit the National Association of College Counselors Web site at http://www.nacac.com. Click on Parent & Student Info, and then Prep for College Calendar.     • Also, the Web site for the College Board, which runs the PSAT, SAT and other college preparatory tests, provides an extensive timeline. Visit the site at http://www.collegeboard.com, then click on the Planning for College section. • Take a campus walk on the Web

        Her family has even used vacations as opportunities for Anne to visit universities, including Purdue, Indiana, Ohio State and University of Florida.

        “You have to think about your future and what you want to do with your future if you want to be a success,” says Anne, a 16-year-old sophomore.

        Anne isn't the only one thinking about her future. Admissions officials across the country are sending Anne and other top academic sophomores campus information packets. Increasingly, colleges that target sophomores are looking for ones who score well on college admissions tests, such as the PSAT and the ACT. Many sophomores take these tests for practice.

        Since Anne's PSAT scores were released in December, she has received 75 to 100 mailings from colleges and universities around the country. “At one point, I got 13 on one day,” she says.

Snooze you lose

        Under the traditional timetable, colleges start marketing to the academic elite at the end of the students' junior year or beginning of their senior year of high school.

        But admissions officials say they cannot afford to wait anymore.

        “Great students have many options,” says Marc Camille, dean of admission at Xavier University. “Even in their sophomore year, students are starting to get hit by colleges. You've got to get your college's name in their minds at that early stage. You'll be shut out if you wait to try to first communicate with them in late junior or early senior year.”

        Mr. Camille says some research shows that as many as 90 percent of high school students have their first college choice in mind by their junior year.

        That's why, since Mr. Camille came to Xavier three years ago, the university has sent at least half of its initial student search direct mail to sophomores. He estimates about half of all private colleges follow a similar marketing strategy.

        Public universities also are following the trend, says Jerry Smith, assistant vice president for enrollment at Northern Kentucky University.

        In addition to sending literature to younger students, NKU sponsors summer programs, holds special campus tours and takes other initiatives to draw younger students to Highland Heights.

        “Is that student recruiting per se? Not really,” Mr. Smith says. “But indirectly it is giving them a slice of what it's like on a college campus. It's early exposure, which we hope might translate to early bonding to this campus.”

Early campus visits

        Anar Patel, a Princeton High School sophomore, started taking advantage of college summer programs for gifted students in the sixth grade.

        In the summers before eighth and ninth grades, she lived in the dorms at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., for a month while studying creative writing and geology. Other summers, she stayed on campuses at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and Miami University in Oxford.

        She says she enjoyed the college atmosphere and learned a lot from the programs. But her mother, Pallavi Patel, says the experiences probably won't affect Anar's final college choice.

        “Those were just for summer,” Mrs. Patel says. “When we start evaluating, she will already know about those colleges. But our decision will be totally independent from that.”

        Anar estimates she's received two to six packages a day from colleges since December. She finds them helpful, but a bit overwhelming.

        “It makes me think about where I would want to go and what I might want to major in there,” Anar says. “But it would be better if I had an idea what colleges I wanted to get mail from rather than getting it from everywhere.”

        Anar listed her mother's e-mail address on the PSAT form, and colleges have been flooding mom's mailbox with correspondence as well.

        “Now it's actually to the point of annoying,” Mrs. Patel says. “Some colleges are even sending multiple e-mails, saying, "Have you thought about it?' We really haven't taken any of those e-mails seriously at all.”

Some like it, some don't

        Students' reactions to the marketing efforts vary.

        Maggie Barr, a sophomore at Highlands High School in Fort Thomas, says the marketing may affect her decision.

        “I've gotten a lot of stuff from colleges I've never heard of,” she says. “If they hadn't sent me something, I never would have heard of them. The colleges make it so you don't have to actually look for them. They're looking for you. That's better than having to search a lot.”

        Ryan Rosensweig, a sophomore at Walnut Hills High School, says he particularly appreciates schools that personalize the literature to his interests.

        “I got a lot of good information about different graphic design and computer science programs that it would take me hours to look up on the Internet,” he says. “It came right to my door.”

        But Scott Bailey, a sophomore from Indian Hill High School, says he's not ready to start comparing college curricula, class sizes and tuition prices.

        “I think it will be interesting to start getting into the process,” Scott says. “But that's still a couple of years off. We're just really halfway through our sophomore year.”

        Tim Miller, a sophomore at Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood, has a similar reaction. He's barely glanced at the dozens of mailings he's received from colleges.

        He's preparing himself for college applications by taking Dixie Heights High School's most challenging classes. But he hasn't thought about a major, and he hasn't considered what type of school or what region of the country he would prefer.

        “I'm not interested in the particulars yet,” he says.

Increases anxiety

        High school counselors say students can start preparing for college as early as middle school by taking challenging courses and maintaining high grades. But they shouldn't worry about some decisions until much later.

        “There's a lot of pressure on kids to make a decision about what they want to do when they're 16 or 17 years old,” says Princeton High School college counselor John Beischel. “I don't think it's really fair.”

        He discourages students from focusing too much on choosing a college based on the major they're considering. “Probably 60-70 percent of students change their major at least once,” he says.

        The abundance of information about college choices, primarily fueled by the growth of the Internet, can exacerbate student anxiety, Mr. Beischel says.

        “I sometimes believe there's too much available too easily. People don't know how to sort it out.

        “On a weekly basis I get information about a new Web site or a new college search service. Sometimes it's overwhelming for those of us who are doing this for a living. Things are changing so rapidly. Sometimes a frustrated adolescent is just going to say, "Leave me alone.' And I don't blame them.”

        But the pressure to make college choices early comes from many other sources besides college marketing departments, counselors acknowledge.

        “There is a lot more concern on parents' part about this whole process, particularly locally because there's been a lot of publicity about the rising costs of Ohio schools,” Mr. Beischel says. “People are more anxious and therefore starting to do homework earlier.”

Try to make it fun

        James D. Williams, director of enrollment services at the University of Cincinnati, also worries about pressure on high school students. But starting the college research process early might lessen the problem if parents follow the right philosophy, he says.

        “My advice to parents is to turn college research into something that's fun,” Mr. Williams says. “Make it like a vacation. Really downplay the urgency. It's an important decision, sure, but it's not a matter of life and death. You can change if it doesn't work out.”

        Anne Zelek's father, Tim, says that's the approach his family has taken.

        “We're not really forcing decisions or discussions,” he says. “This kind of gives us an opportunity to slowly ease into it without the pressure toward the end when we need to start making decisions.”

        He thinks that the contacts and the information schools are providing his daughter will ultimately be helpful.

        “The next two years — her junior and senior years — will go very fast,” Mr. Zelek says. “It helps to keep in mind that she needs to be thinking about her future.”

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