If you’re raising a teenager, you’re probably being reminded over and over again that you’re
uncool, out of touch, and seriously uninformed. I mean, how could you not know about
_____________? [Insert Eye Roll].
I’m sorry to tell you that they might be right. At least, they’re right when it comes to most
things related to college admissions.
Parents’ advice is out of sync with their teens’ current experience
If you went to college, especially the kind of school (or the specific school) to which your kid wants to apply, there is probably little left from your experience that will hold up as real in the current college application and admissions process.
How do I know? I am an admissions dean (and parent), and I am familiar with the pressures that can wear down, or wind up, hopeful applicants. Parents’ advice that is out of sync with their actual experience is on the list of pressures.
When you applied, you might have learned about a college because you knew someone who attended, lived nearby, received a brochure in the mail, or built a list from a web search. You might have applied to a few colleges.
You might have gotten a postcard back from an admissions office, confirming that your application had been received. Then, you probably went about your business for a couple of weeks or months, waiting for a decision letter to arrive in the mailbox, generally within a week or two of the school’s posted ‘mailing date’ for decisions.
The college admissions process is rough these days
I have news. The college admissions process you remember isn’t the one your child is
experiencing. And it’s rough out there. Today’s applicants are surrounded and besieged. They’re in a giant swirl of school information, rankings, chat rooms, social media, and admissions influencers.
The advice coming at them might feel directive, urgent, and contradictory. To exist among this competing information, a young person has to engage self-awareness and discernment at levels that challenge most grown adults. Then, when actually applying to college, it feels like the whole world is watching because, on most days, the whole world is in their DMs and at their fingertips on their phones.
In a process that requires many decisions, some of them big, it’s easy to forget where teenagers are, developmentally. They are not typically functioning with fully secure self-awareness, confidence, and purposeful direction. Rather, they are just beginning to find their feet as individuals, learning to separate from their parents, siblings, friends.
The colleges’ evaluative processes are more complex than ever before and students know this
All of that would be plenty hard enough, but that’s not all. There’s also the evolution of how
college admissions has changed in the last 20 years. As our applicant pools have expanded in multiple dimensions, we have a responsibility to enroll classes that represent extraordinary geographic, socioeconomic, experiential, and intellectual diversity. And, often, the class sizes have remained the same. This all means that evaluative processes are more complex than ever before. Students know this.
As I said, it’s rough out there. Also, I have more news.
As a parent, you do have a unique opportunity and it’s not mapping your own remembered
experience onto your child’s. It’s not about reviving aspirations of shots you feel you might have missed when you applied. It’s not about the sticker you’ll put on the car.
Your opportunity is the relationship you have with your child. You have been in your child’s life throughout. You have insight into who they’ve been, at each stage of development, and into the new expressions of who they are becoming as an adult.
Instead of being the navigator, be the rudder
Resist, if you can, the desire to be the navigator. Be the rudder. Apply the mature skill of
discernment you’ve earned as adult. Help your child ask probing questions so they can securely navigate the choices they will make. And, by choices, I mean the thousands of choices that are required, whether that is to click on the advice that comes up on Instagram’s FYP or to scroll by, to internalize a criticism or to release it as a difference of opinion.
Help them ask “does this make sense?” when advice they receive challenges their direction. What are the credentials of the source? What is the motivation of the source? How does that advice feel?
Parents, this is your time to dial-in to what your child is facing, feeling, and negotiating in this real-time college application experience. It’s your opportunity to repeatedly remind them of
how special they are, as they are, in the maelstrom of messages otherwise telling them what they should want and who they should be.
Parents can hold a space of stability, consistency, and security for their kids
You can hold a space of stability, consistency, and security. You can create the breathing room for them to feel good about how they are learning to know themselves. You can prove that what makes them special does not depend on a college admissions outcome.
If you can do that, your child will be positioned to enroll in a school that is well suited to them, their aspirations, their style of learning, and their pursuit of what matters to them.
You still might not be cool. But you just might be in touch and informed.
More Great Reading:
Dean of Admissions Tells Parents This Is How You Can Really Help Your Teen
