Every admissions officer has a story about the overbearing parent who takes 100 percent control of the college application process. Parents’ appropriate role is to offer guidance, support and empathy during a complicated, emotionally taxing, and in some cases disappointing, process.
Here are our six best tips, which we tested recently during our son’s college search — he’s just started at Princeton University .
1. Work with your child to set a timetable: This is a good place to take the lead, especially if your son or daughter is prone to procrastination or doesn’t want to think about college yet. At the beginning of junior year, sit down together and plan a schedule. Things to calendar: making the initial list, visiting the colleges, taking the SAT or ACT, and writing the applications.
[Follow this timeline of key steps for completing college applications.]
2. Offer guidance in developing a preliminary list: With thousands of choices, many students have no idea where to start. Help your child frame his preferences: big vs. small, near home or far away, city or rural.
Once he has settled on a couple of choices, encourage him to locate colleges with similar characteristics using resources such as the search tools at usnews.com, the “choose a college” function at collegeresults.org and college websites. Discuss pruning any schools you can’t afford to avoid disappointment later.
3. Help your child to find her “differentiator”: The holistic review used by many colleges rewards not only good grades and test scores but also accomplishments and activities that set a student apart. Brainstorm to locate your child’s focal interest — preferably one showing her initiative and sustained commitment — and then help her find ways to develop it.
If she is interested in game design, you might point her to a summer internship with a game design company, a college course in graphic design or artificial intelligence, and a game design competition.
[Understand how to stand out as a college applicant.]
4. Don’t commandeer the college trips: Encourage your child to take the initiative in setting up the information session, campus tour, lunch with a student and, most important, visit to a class. Participate in the group activities, but let your child handle the class and interactions with students on her own. Be a sounding board.
5. Be a calming influence: The college search is a multiyear process, with moments of high stress and self-doubt. Kids are not used to this. Be empathetic and encourage your child to take things one step at a time.
6. Let your child “own” the decision: Remember, it’s his life, not yours.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2017” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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6 Ways Parents Can Help Students With the College Application Process originally appeared on usnews.com
