Wise Words for High School Seniors (and Juniors, too)

I thought we could be ahead of the admissions game, visiting colleges early, trying to get a sense of what attracts our teen, and what she hates, about various colleges.

The truth is, our junior's ownership of the process will occur when she's ready, not when I am. No amount of parental guidance makes it happen more quickly or efficiently.

That said, I hope my teen and others read this thoughtful, sensible piece on how to choose the right college the first time.

Meanwhile, I don't suspect there will be any revelations anytime soon. We've got midterms and the school musical taking precedence. But maybe after that?

Can a Book Change Lives?

For several years I've heard about Loren Pope's Colleges that Change Lives, especially around this time of year when kids have found out they didn't get into the prestigious/well known college they'd hoped for. It's cold comfort for kids who sought the bright lights of the Ivies and got a cold shoulder.

But it's a good time for us as parents to remember why we want our kids to go to college -- and what we really hope they get out of it. Okay. To me that means that college should be a time of learning, discussing, challenging – all in pursuit of finding something that really matters to them and that also allows them to earn a living doing it.

Yesterday I read the used copy I'd ordered from Amazon -- complete with notes and underlines from, I'd guess, a high school student. Then I looked at the Colleges that Change Lives (CTCL) site. It's an up-to-date look at the 40 colleges that comprise the CTCL list. The mission of this non-profit organization? It's "dedicated to the advancement and support of a student-centered college search process. We support the goal of each student finding a college that develops a lifelong love of learning and provides the foundation for a successful and fulfilling life beyond college."

No one can argue with that premise. I confess, though, that as I read about the colleges, they seemed to blur. They are, for the most part, somewhat obscure, small colleges that seem to exist in their own universe. But they share admirable attributes: small classes taught by professors, not TAs; a strong and committed academic community; students who come in as average on paper and then are nurtured, worked hard and are transformed.

The innate goodness of these colleges sounds almost too good to be true. That said, I wouldn't mind if our teen wanted to visit some of them. Still,
In a way, the CTCL perspective is almost radical. Putting the student first! Gosh, I'd bet a lot of colleges might be forced to shut their doors if "students first" became a mandate.

Sleuth Before the Big Decision

Not to be annoying, but I have one more consideration to add as students and their families think through college options.

Are you absolutely sure of the health of the program or major you are pointing toward? Take the time for a little detective work before making your final decision.

Why? Some colleges may not be as committed to a program as you are. Penn State just announced cutbacks in its English department,home of a literature doctoral program ranked in the top 15 in the country by the National Research Council; the department is not taking any more students into its MFA in creative writing program. A subset is a nonfiction masters program ranked among the top five in the world.

You'd think Penn State would build on this strength, which, I am sure, attracts prospective English majors because of its stellar reputation. But no, that's not the case in this crazy, economics-driven world. According to a dean, the reason the cuts have been made is because the English department has a smaller enrollment of undergraduate students than other departments.

I get it, on the filthy lucre level. But for an institution to have worked so hard to build a significant, well thought of department, only to tear it down so quickly seems shortsighted, frightening and sudden.

So, before you sign, do a little digging. Make sure you check chat rooms, contact any majors in your chosen field that you may have met, and do a general search to see if the intended college has a history of cut backs in departments important to your teen.

Maybe there won't be any danger signs. Maybe the Penn State situation is an anomaly. But no harm in doing a little more homework before making this big decision.

From the Trenches -- Starting Points for the College Selection Process Part 3

This will be the last in the series -- we will be looking at some concrete things that can be done (dare I say by parents)to jump start the process of figuring out what schools just might make sense.

Here's what Tina Squyres shared. "This is the one place that I stuck my oar in (with my kids’ blessing). To get them started, and since the number of schools that are available is so large, I created a spreadsheet for each daughter. I started with what they want to study (which included for my older daughter music opportunities for non-music majors). The spreadsheet includes information about male/female ratio, SATs, location, number of students, academic/social/quality of life ratings, and a column of notes from the college guides. It is sorted by location in the country (neither daughter is interested in a southern school but they are on the spreadsheet), overall size, and academic rating.

"My older daughter used the spreadsheet exclusively when deciding which schools to visit and where to apply. I’m not sure how my daughter who's a junior will use it, but she feels like it makes the process a little more manageable. Her spreadsheet has 60 schools on it. She probably won't consider smaller schools (under 3,000 students); the southern schools that made the list; and schools where the male/female ratio is skewed heavily in favor of women. That means that her working list is approximately 30 schools...a more manageable list than the several hundred schools found in the college books. It also means that I hope I did my homework really well!"

Kim Cook and Tina have taken similar paths. "Some experts may disagree with this, but frankly once you have some of those preferences, and if you know your kid pretty well, I would do a fair bit of the legwork yourself online in terms of researching schools. I work from home so I could devote an hour almost every day to scouring all of the aggregate sites – Princeton Review, Kiplinger’s, US News, Collegeboard, College Prowler, College Confidential, etc. I delved deep into potential schools websites – you can tell a whole lot about a school from their online image, and from videos, student comments, how engaged the school seems to be with its community and student body. Departmental pages for the subject areas my kids were interested in were an important component of this online research too."

She added something we all need to remember as we face travel to prospective schools. "You can waste a whole college visit trip if you haven’t thoroughly ‘explored’ the school online. We have lots of friends who literally drove up the entrance to campuses and turned around and drove back out – the first impressions were so negative for the kids they didn’t even care to get out of the car! If you’ve driven or flown a long way, that’s a big waste of time. Do a lot of virtual legwork ahead of time, then present the bookmarked pages and your first impressions to your student, let them explore the schools’ websites on their own, and build your list that way."

But, try to make the process as pleasant as possible. Linda Auld, of Suburban Learning Center described a mother/daughter road trip her friend took recently. "They took it easy visiting one college in the morning and then sightseeing, staying in nice hotels, and visiting family/friends along the way, covering five schools, big and small, from Delaware to D.C. Now they have some ideas about big/small, public/private, city/suburban. Their advice: treat yourself nicely and just don't try to do too much in one day!"

We'll change the subject tomorrow, but many thanks to our panelists who responded and shared their views.

From the Trenches -- Starting Points for the College Selection Process Part 2

Today we're looking at how families deal with building a foundation for the college search -- and how they work with their children to sort out the basics.

Our college admissions panelist gives us an honest perspective, one that I feel I lived myself many years ago. When I was looking at colleges, I didn't do much research but did have some gut (though generally uninformed) feelings about what I wanted.

She says, "I can’t help but feel that this is where we fell flat as a family. My daughter’s choices were based primarily on a few factors (in a major urban center, medium to large-sized, not in the South) and she refused to consider anything outside those parameters, although at least it gave us a starting point. I felt that she didn’t really know why she wanted those things (other than not being in the South since that’s where we live), she just did. Now that we’re a month away from final decisions, she’s still happy with those choices, though, so maybe she knows herself better than I think."

She goes on to mention two other young women she knows well. "Our niece the musician chose only schools where there were notable instructors for her particular instrument. I worry that she didn’t look more broadly at the schools themselves, but I suppose time will tell. Our friends’ daughter selected schools based on her desire to major in dance, and now she’s finding that she’s not being admitted to the dance programs, even when she’s admitted to the schools." I hadn't even thought of that admissions nightmare.

Panelist Kim Cook says, "We did a lot of visualizing with our kids in terms of how they saw an average day at college, what were classes ideally like, what should dorm life offer, are you seeing yourself using the gym, do you need a city nearby or would a small funky town be a refreshing change, do you want some nature nearby, how often do you see yourself coming home...We talked through these questions frequently, not just once, and some of the answers began to appear over and over while others evolved until finally we had a pretty decent ‘scenario’ from which to work."

Jeanne Hogle's daughter started getting her admissions moorings in sophomore year, right around this time last year. Till then, she was bouncing around in her thinking about the where and what of college but doctor or lawyer were definite interests. She started talking to an English teacher, who had been a lawyer, and to doctors about becoming one. She also took the Fiske quiz mentioned last week and seems to be pretty focused in her efforts.

Tomorrow, we'll look at some specific steps parents can take to bring some discipline to the effort -- while also taking some pressure off their teens.

If this is giving you anxiety attacks -- because you don't think the process is going well, or you are too involved, or not involved enough (as if anyone knows what the answer is to that one), treat yourself to a quick read on an area of psychological research called self-compassion. The article grabbed me on the first sentence. "Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family?"

If you answer yes, I want to know how you do it.

Building the College Prospect List -- Is It Possible to Find the Perfect Fit?

Or is it a crap shoot, as it was for me? As I have related before, my college selection process was not the least bit strategic, was scarcely tailored to my interests and lacked much adult guidance, though I had plenty of moral support.

I had blossomed in my all-girls (public) high school and thought the blossoming might continue if I went to an all-girls college. But I did not get into the one I wanted (and didn't know anything about demonstrated interest back then, or I would have demonstrated tons of interest). Nonetheless, I was accepted by Duke and received a fine education. But was it a perfect fit? Probably not.

Here's an interesting discussion on finding the right college. Frankly, perfect fit is a romantic notion that has little place in this overly competitive, everyone looking at the same 25 schools environment. So if the college your teen lands in doesn't seem, at first, the right one, ask yourself a few questions. At 17 or 18, how many teens really know what they want? And isn't part of growing up making a situation work for you?

That said, our sophomore has promised to start compiling a list of colleges that might hold interest and then looking at them on Naviance and in college guides to see if they should remain on the list.

College Car Talk

Some time ago I slipped a college directory into the car. My thinking: when we are on long drives, going through different states, we can read about colleges located in the areas we're driving through. Just a no-pressure way to get a sophomore to start thinking about the kinds of schools that might appeal. It is, right now, just a game, pre-PSAT, pre-results from the academically challenging year coming up.

But even games can reveal some truths. On a 10-hour drive back from a camping trip in Maine, I would ask what colleges the teen wanted to hear about then read the descriptions from the Fiske directory.

What we learned is that right now our teen seems more interested in an urban setting and she is already beginning to clarify her thinking on what her academic interests might be.

It's a time of dreams and unlimited horizons. Reality will set in soon enough.

Thinking Back

When I was looking at colleges for me, I had a rather large collection of pre-set notions. I didn't want to stay in state, let alone in town. An all-women's college in the north was preferable to an all-women's college in the south. The best co-ed school trumped the best same-sex one. My reactions to these schools were usually based on chemistry supported by a few facts.

We visited every college I applied to, with the exception of Hobart-William Smith in New York's Finger Lakes region. I attended a get-acquainted session in Baltimore. When asked why I might want to attend, I responded with the usual stuff. Then I threw in, for good measure, that it would be wonderful to be close to Manhattan. My hometown was closer to Manhattan than Hobart! Had I gone there, I would have been forced to take remedial geography.

I suspect we all make major decisions with highly customized sets of biases and blind spots. As we get older we usually add a little more knowledge and logic to the process. Or sometimes we don't.

At least today's teens have much more information available to help them build their lists of possible college targets. But in the end, as with most decisions, gut takes over.