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Gulp. Your kid is a high school junior -- and it's time to begin the daunting search for the best college. The competitive landscape is intense. All those babies of baby boomers are vying for spots, so colleges are turning away more and more applicants.
Some parents are going gangbusters, forking out as much as $10,000 for a private tutor to help their kids get high SAT scores. To juice their applications, some students take exotic tours to build homes in Africa or community centers in Fiji. And deep down, you have this gripping fear that your kid might end up with no place to go. "It's not where your kid gets in but if your kid gets in," says one strung-out parent.
I won't minimize how draining the college-application process can be for parents. No matter how sincerely you tell them that it doesn't have to be that bad, it's a fact that the search takes a toll. But there are ways to get through these trying times with as little damage as possible. As a survivor with two kids in college (my son Jason is a junior at Duke and my daughter Anna is a freshman at Oberlin), I'll provide tips in this column that I hope will allow you to avoid some pitfalls and make the most of your child's last year of high school.
EXTRA PRESSURE. First, let me remind you that this ordeal is much more stressful for your child. At the private school in New York City that my kids attended, getting into college is the major preoccupation of senior year. High school buddies are obsessed with it. Your kid is trying to take the "right" classes -- enough advanced-placement courses, for example -- favored by the most elite schools. Seniors must write stellar essays for their applications. They have to fill out the forms, which isn't as painless as it might sound.
Kids must undergo interviews with admissions officers or college alums. They're under pressure to make an early decision -- singling out one college to woo before all others -- mainly because they believe it will help their chances of getting into their top pick. And then there's you -- putting the pressure on them to make sure that visits to colleges are organized, applications are filled out, and interviews take place.
So don't be surprised if your child doesn't feel like discussing the matter when you bring it up. Take it from me, don't force the issue. I recall Jason completely disengaging at one point when we mentioned college during his senior year. That's all he heard about at school, and he certainly didn't want to live in that pressure cooker at home. We had some confrontations about filling out college applications in what I considered to be a timely manner, and I regret them.
PERSONAL MATTER. As Anna puts it, "Don't freak out your kids. Instead let your kids freak out to you. Be a strong post for them: Don't take on their panicked energy."
This leads me to my first piece of advice. Don't focus on the frenzied, competitive environment. Don't worry what other parents are doing or where other students are applying. Focus on what's best for your kid. And that determination should be made by your child. Ask your child what he or she might want in a school. Big university or small college? Private or state school? Urban or rural? What courses are of particular interest?
You may have visited a school or two over spring break. Don't worry if you haven't. But as Jason points out, visiting schools makes a huge difference because it gives kids a chance to get a feel for each institution. So now is a good time to start thinking about making travel arrangements. During Jason's junior year, we made our first visit over the March break -- to one university.
KEEP IT FLUID. If you're lucky, your high school guidance counselor may have given you a list of appropriate schools. It should include "reach" schools (long shots given your child's record), "target" schools (realistic possibilities), and "safety" schools as a backup. Don't assume that schools that are harder for your kid to get into are necessarily the best choices for your child. Again, keep a laser focus on your kid's interests and try to find the best match. To ensure maximum success, do not neglect your choice of safety schools. If you've chosen safety schools that your kid would be happy to attend, then there won't be a big disappointment.
The list is just for starters. Though counselors may give it a great deal of thought, the list is still subjective. You should add and subtract schools as you and your child see fit. Jason had two guidance counselors. The first said that Duke, for whatever reasons, wasn't receptive to kids from Jason's school. Her replacement insisted that Duke would be a great choice. Glad we went with her advice.
The goal is to discover which school will have the best environment for your child. Often you and your child don't have a clue what that is. I mistakenly assumed that Anna, a big city kid, would want to attend a major university until we visited several, including an Ivy that she found to be big and staid. She then decided that she wanted a more intimate setting in a small college.
NO LIMITS. With all the qualified applicants out there, there's often no telling why a school picks one student over another. It could be, as one newspaper recently reported, that a college needs a tuba player. It could be that a particular institution values geographic diversity, so an applicant from Nebraska has an edge over an equally qualified one from New York. At a college night for parents at our high school, one college admissions officer said that his institution was seeking gender balance and therefore giving preference to boys.
Who can figure? As Anna says, "It's a crap shoot of major proportions." Just pick the schools that work for your child. Don't give a second thought to whether others from your kid's high school are applying to the same places, because the colleges don't necessarily limit how many kids they'll take from an individual school. Three kids in Jason's class went to Duke, and four from Anna's went to Oberlin. You'll hear this over and over again -- but there are many, many schools out there. Your child will get into one, bond with it and get a great education even if it's not ranked in the top 10.
NEXT UP. One final note: Planning makes perfect. An organized approach to choosing schools and preparing applications really does help strip out some of the stress. You'll get through it all anyway, but why not reduce the hassles and get fewer gray hairs?
In my next column I'll give some pointers on how to make the most of a college visit. I have a long list of subjects to cover, but if you have a topic on your mind, please send me an e-mail, and I'll attempt to address it. In the meantime, try to relax.
"College Mom" is a continuing column that will examine the undergraduate college experience from a parent's point of view.
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