A Parent's Survival Guide to College Planning
Your teenager might have a college or two in mind that she’s considering for admissions.
Or maybe she doesn’t have any idea at all – she has a hard time even beginning to think about a list of potential colleges.
No doubt – this is challenging. There are 4,000 potential schools out there. That’s a lot of options, and it can take some serious effort and dedication to find the perfect college match.
So it’s no wonder your teen’s a little paralyzed and overwhelmed in the process.
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Thousands of articles have been written about helping your teen find the best college match.
(Heck, I probably wrote most of them.)
But there’s one thing that I’ve found missing from the whole “college search” conversation:
Mindset.
Rarely do we give our teens a proper, basic understanding of what they’re actually trying to do here…. of what finding the right college match actually means. And of what they need to wrap their minds around.
Teenagers should have the right foundation for thinking before doing the technical work of searching for the right college fit.
So before you dig into those college search engines or research graduation rates and admissions stats, help your teen lay some basic mental groundwork to really grasp the process.
Share these important ideas with your teen.
(I’ll bet they’ll help you restructure your thinking, too.)
If you know anything about the advice I give for students who are knee deep in trying to decide which colleges are the best fit, you know that I believe that visiting college campuses is one of the most important items on the to-do list.
But, let’s be honest – these trips can get expensive, especially if your teen is gung-ho on attending college in a different state.
So first, download my free College Visit Checklist to be sure your teen’s getting the most from those college visits. Then, check out these simple strategies that will help you keep those costs down.
We all know that college visits are designed to allow students to find the right college fit: to explore, ask questions and get a feel for campuses and what each school has to offer. Students should be armed with a list of questions about each school to learn the most they can on tours.
Parents, too, should be asking thoughtful questions. While it’s great to put the responsibility of finding out all he can about a college, I’ll bet that young Johnny’s not thinking about things like campus health services.
Check out this list of essential questions parents should ask on each college visit.
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There are so many parents who are just sure their teen will get into their competitive dream college. And many of them apply only to those very selective schools – that’s all you’ll see on their college lists.
It could be that your kid has dreamed of attending an Ivy-league school and plans on applying to one or more. Maybe that’s even your dream for your teen. That’s very commendable, and there’s of course a possibility that he’ll be admitted if his numbers stack up, which would be tremendous!
There’s no sugar-coating this, though: Admissions officers won’t give applications a second look if students don’t fall within the range of what’s acceptable for their colleges.Continue Reading