9th and 10th grade: what to do now
Someone at work mentioned their sophomore is already touring campuses and now you are wondering what you have missed. Nope, you're right on time. This page covers what actually counts this year, what is still years off, and what is worth doing in the next few weeks.
You are not behind
Sophomore campus visits are unusually early. Most families start visiting in the spring of junior year, and most students take a real admissions test for the first time that same spring. If your student is in 9th or 10th grade with decent grades and no plan yet, you are on time.
What already counts
Grades now matter. 9th and 10th grade grades go on the transcript a college reads. There is no practice year.
Course choices count, largely because they set up what is possible to take later. A student who doesn't take the recommended math class in 10th grade may not be able to reach calculus by senior year even if they turn out to want it. See choosing high school classes for the rigor-versus-grades trade.
Standardized test scores do not count yet. Nothing a student takes before junior year is reported to colleges. The PSAT they may take this fall is practice, and only the junior-year PSAT connects to National Merit. See testing.
A typical three year calendar
A lot of what follows is the student's responsibility rather than yours - but every line of it is worth talking through with them, so nothing lands as a surprise.
10th grade
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Fall | Take the PSAT, if the school offers it to sophomores. It is practice only, and no score goes anywhere. |
| Winter | Make your course selection for junior year, the year colleges look hardest at. |
| Spring | Walk a campus if you live near one. Not a formal tour, just so a college stops being abstract. |
| Any time | Let an activity get deeper rather than adding a fifth one. |
Junior year
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Fall | Take the PSAT again. This is the one that qualifies for National Merit. |
| Winter | Take a practice SAT and a practice ACT, then pick whichever went better. |
| Spring | Sit the first real SAT or ACT, and visit campuses over spring break. |
| Spring | Ask the school counselor what they need from you for senior year. |
| Summer | Start the college list. See building the list. |
Senior year
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Fall | Send the applications and essays, and retest if the first score was close. |
| October | File the FAFSA - the Free Application for Federal Student Aid - when it opens. See filling out the FAFSA. |
| Winter | Compare the decisions and aid offers as they arrive. See understanding aid letters. |
| By May 1 | Choose, deposit, and the send-off timeline takes over. |
What college actually costs
The number that matters is net price - what a family actually pays per year after grant aid, and generally well below the published price. The medians run near $12,900 for a public in-state four-year and $22,300 for a private nonprofit. Those medians come from the U.S. Department of Education's own data - the College Scorecard and IPEDS - across every college in our finder. Scholarships and 529s carries the full spread, and why your own number can only come from a school's net price calculator.
The reason to know it now rather than in two years is the tax year below.
The tax year that will decide your aid
The FAFSA uses income from two years before the school year it pays for. Work that backward and the year that counts arrives earlier than the college years themselves.
The decisive year begins in January of your student's sophomore year and runs through the fall of their junior year. For a student starting 10th grade in the fall of 2026, that is calendar 2027 - months away, not years. A current 9th grader is one year behind each date.
If you have any say over the timing of a bonus, a stock sale, a Roth conversion or a business decision, that is the year it lands in. Worth raising with whoever does your taxes before it begins. The FAFSA page covers how the form works.
Three things to do this month
Not fifteen. If you only have twenty minutes, do these.
- Check over their transcript. Not the report card, the actual transcript. Check that the GPA is what you think it is and that 9th grade is on it. If something is wrong, now is when it is fixable.
- Ask your student which class they would take more of. Not what they want to be - unless they have wanted to be an astronaut or a doctor for years, in which case that is real signal and worth taking seriously. Absent that, the class question is the more reliable one at fifteen, and it makes course selection in a few months a conversation instead of a fight.
- Run one net price calculator. Pick any school your student has heard of. The point is not that school, it is seeing how far the real number sits from the sticker price. You will need your own income and tax figures to hand, so it is a parent's ten minutes rather than a student's.
What to ignore for now
Rankings, reach lists, essay topics, and anything with the word "strategy" in it. All of that is junior and senior year work, and starting it early does not make it better. What compounds between now and then is grades, course rigor, and depth in one or two activities.