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Adolescents feel a tremendous amount of pressure
associated with the college search. You, as parents,
play an important role in making this experience more
comfortable and productive for your children. You can
offer your children support as they go through this time
of exploration. If they aren't accepted at a particular
school, you can help them deal with the disappointment
and move on. Parents feel a great deal of pressure as
well. Some of you may look upon college choice as the
"final exam" of parenting and judge whether you have
passed or failed by your perception of the "value" of your
child's college admission. Try to maintain perspective!
Resist the urge to think of the college selection process
as merely a "numbers game." Your child is not a 32 ACT,
a 1030 SAT, or a 3.15 GPA. Similarly, a college's quality
cannot be summarized by a mathematical formula or
a national magazine's rankings. Admission decisions,
while they all use numbers as a starting point, are not
always rational or obvious, as admission people will
sometimes admit after the fact. Making these decisions
is, in truth, more of an art than a science. As parents,
you should acknowledge and share your aspirations, but
keep them in the context of all the other factors that
are part of your student's college search. You need to
lend your support and guidance, but he or she should
be the one to take the lead. Be there for your student,
but allow them to be the one who asks the questions.
You might be asking yourselves how to determine
what makes a "good" college. Is it the percentage
of applicants the institution accepts each year? Is
it the school's average SAT scores? Is it the rating a
college receives in a national magazine's report?
ese numbers, in our opinion, are a poor starting
point at best, often leading families away from the
hard work of finding a truly relevant definition of a
"good" institution or a "good fit" for their child.
SECTION 2
JUST FOR PARENTS
