Parental Involvement in College Decision Process
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Anonymous
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It's a totally fun family process -- we all loved the road trips and the mountain of mail and thrill of merit aid (even at schools you knew they wouldn't attend, darn it all). You're missing a great opportunity if you don't approach it as such. That said, I also thought being involved made me a more credible truth teller as I tried to keep our kids grounded in reality, not too stressed, not hung up on any one school, clear eyed about the odds and how the system is rigged, not so focused on the next four years that they were giving short shrift to the twilight years of childhood. It's gross what the college process has become. But in my mind that makes the parenting role more important than ever -- someone has to minimize the incoming insanity, and if not the parents, who?
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Anonymous
| OP here, and appreciate all of the perspectives. To clarify, when I said I couldn't imagine dictating my children's college options in no way did I mean to suggest that I would provide zero input or assistance, just that I see myself playing a supporting role ( I like one pps analogy of being like a college consultant) to make help make them aware of available options, give suggestions, and assist as needed. It just seems like so many parents posting actually sound like they are the primary decision make and unilaterally veto large subsets of schools or set very specific limitations. |
Anonymous
| The big tip off between "supportive" and "overly involved" is when a parent says "We are applying to..." or "We need to get started on applications." |
Anonymous
YES!!!!! |
Anonymous
| OP again and agree with a couple of the most recent posts about the excitement of the process. I absolutely loved the whole college search process and can't wait to share in it with my kids by visiting schools, discussing options with them ect...I just want them to be fully invested and ultimately feel like it is their decision, like I was able to when I went through it myself. |
Anonymous
To OP - I know others have said this but it's worth repeating. The college application process has changed dramatically since you and I applied. I did all my own testing, applications and law school applications. I can't even tell you what my essays were on because I didn't consider them important. I don't even remember my SAT or LSAT scores. I got a $35.00 check from mom and mailed four apps and got into all four colleges. That world is long gone. While you want your children to make the decision, you need to realize that picking a college that might cost $72K a year (and might take five or six years to complete) is the cost of buying a home. That wasn't the case when we went. Also we didn't have competition from the favored groups, especially the international students. You really need to read up on this. There are some great books on the process now. We can all recommend some. But, in short, if you wait until senior year and then Larla suddenly decides she wants to go to Stanford but has achieved nothing spectacular for her ECs and has ho hum grades or scores, she doesn't have a chance. Most of us couldn't get into our own colleges and law schools today. You can achieve a balance between being encouraging and helpful while not being a tiger mom, but it is a critical decision in a young child's life and often shouldn't be left to a 17 year old. If you don't believe me, just go look at the recent thread about what EA, ED and SCEA mean. Someone needs to unravel that. Someone needs to guide your child to the ACT or the SAT (some children do better on one than the other). Does your child have special needs? They can get extra time but you must start that process years in advance. Can they achieve Eagle Scout or something similar? Any activity or honor that demonstrates leadership and determination is looked upon favorably by the admissions office. Do they have a unique talent or instrument you can foster? Athletic prowess? |
Anonymous
| And with all the various deadlines they need help coordinating. |
Anonymous
This is a pretty standard spiel, but I don't quite agree. Back in the dark ages when I was in college, the elite colleges were not accessible to the vast majority of Americans, no matter how qualified. The cost of attendance was a little over $20k, my mom earned less than the national median wage of $25k, her house was worth less than $100k and the most I could earn work-study was $3.35/hour. Only half of the Ivies were need blind, gave loans first (with 12% interest!) in their financial aid packages, and retirement and home equity were always included in their calculations. They gapped regularly - one year, my family contribution was higher than my mom's AGI. Students on aid couldn't do junior year abroad because you couldn't work overseas. Andover and Exeter still had unofficial slots and legacy did not have to come close to the academic standards held for students like me. Today, the elite college are more accessible with far greater financial aid budgets than back in the day. No high school is an Ivy feeder, legacy have higher average stats than others, and students with family incomes below $100k can attend with no family contribution or loans. There are additional grants available to cover unpaid internships and study/research abroad. While the pool of qualified students is larger than ever, so are the enrollments (though they haven't kept up with population growth). It may be tougher on students with incomes in the top 5%, but it is easier for everyone else. Public universities are where there are real problems now. Before systematic defunding, the public universities used to be far more affordable. Now there are many public colleges that give more aid to those without financial need than they do to students who need it. |
Anonymous
Not accurate. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/18/college-tuition-unaffordable-growth-median-income_n_5505653.html |
Anonymous
| I guess DH and I were lucky enough that we didn't need to "control" the application process. The collaboration between us and our DD flowed naturally and openly, if that makes sense. DD sort of knew what our boundaries were for her and though it was really all up to her, she knew what we considered important in the process. She looked at all her choices and reasoned "Mom and Dad, this school would be good because _____" or "I would qualify for this scholarship to bring the cost down to ______", etc etc. So there was never a moment where we were at odds with what one another wanted. |
Anonymous
Your ignorance is abundant, given you have not seen our list. |
Anonymous
| Haven’t made DC justify DC’s choices. Took DC to all sorts of options - big/small, rural/urban, ivy/safety, etc. And then DC chose. We don’t ask why. |
Anonymous
Not the PP but I had the same reaction to your statement. Your "list" would be based on the *sticker price* of the college and not on what the *actual* price would be. You can't know what the actual price will be until your kid gets an offer. We don't qualify for FA either, but our kid got a 35% athletic scholarship for his dream school, which we never would have allowed him to go to at full sticker price (close to $70K). Your kids are only in ES. It's awfully early in the game to be so rigid. You don't know what they will bring to the table when they are 17. When the time comes, you can tell them what your budget is, and that they have to apply to some schools that are within that budget without any aid at all, and then they can also apply to some more expensive schools and see if merit aid fills the gap. |
Anonymous
You aren't even curious? You don't even talk about it to understand DC better, his interests, hopes, desires, etc? You know you can talk about these things without it being a "justification". Even if we had no budget and my DC could go anywhere in the world, I'd ask him why he was choosing what he did. Because I'm interested in his life and what is important to him. |
Anonymous
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I'm still a ways out from this process with my own kids, but I do have thoughts based on my own experience with my parents during the college search process. They put pretty tight reigns on my list of colleges, some of which I respected and some of which I resented. For instance, I completely understood when they said I needed to choose schools within a certain radius of home, because money was incredibly tight and they couldn't afford a lot of travel expenses (we were in southern CT, so fortunately this left a lot of options). By contrast, did resent it when they told me I couldn't go to a school in a city or to a large university, because the idea of these environments made them feel anxious. It didn't matter how I felt about them, they just couldn't see themselves feeling comfortable at those schools so they were off the list for me.
As for the process itself, my mom was a taskmaster who put together a rigorous schedule that had all of my applications completed before I even submitted my EA application. At the time I resented it because it interfered with my social life at times and a lot of the work was rendered moot when I got into my EA school and didn't submit any other applications, but once we were through it I appreciated what she'd done because I saw my friends go through the stress of trying to churn out applications at the last moment and I was relieved I wasn't going through that as well. She also spent a lot of time with me debating which school to apply to ED/EA, and it was very clear during those discussions where she wanted me to apply, but ultimately left the decision up to me. I did end up applying to the school she wanted because she'd made her case well, but had she told me I had to apply EA there it might have become something I resented rather than embraced. So they didn't get it all right (I wouldn't restrict schools based on my own preferences the way they did), but overall I think they did well by me. |