How can parents help?




 

 

If you have a high school senior who’s planning to attend college, the next seven or eight months could be an emotional roller coaster.

Your teenager is coming face to face with his opportunities and limitations at a time when his emerging identity is still uncertain. He may feel overwhelmed by the choices and procrastinate, never getting around to narrowing a list of schools or writing an essay.

It may be tough to refrain from reminding him every day to work on college applications, but it’s better to designate a time once a week to discuss how the applications are going. If every dinner becomes an interrogation about why he hasn’t started the Common App essay, the next few months will be miserable for everyone, and your child might shut down and avoid doing anything related to college applications.

This is where parents can start thinking it would be easier to write the essays themselves than to get their kid to do it. That’s not a good idea for many reasons. Even if you’re willing to ignore the fact that it’s unethical (which I’m not suggesting), writing your child’s college application essays can backfire.

Admissions officers have read thousands of essays, and they’re pretty good at spotting the writing of a 45-year-old. If the writing in the essay doesn’t match the student’s grade in English or is much better than the writing score from the SAT would indicate, they might decide to download the student’s SAT essay and compare the writing samples. Instead of helping your child get into college by writing his application essay, you might be damaging his prospects for admission.

Taking over a child’s college application process communicates that you don’t think he’s capable of doing it himself at a time when he needs to develop the confidence to go off to college and manage his life. It also robs him of the opportunity to engage in a thoughtful exploration of his goals and interests, an important task for adolescents.

By allowing your child to be responsible for his college application process, you help him feel competent to manage his life.

That doesn’t mean parents should be completely removed from the process. There are important ways you can help. When they think about all of the tasks required to apply to college, kids can feel overwhelmed. Helping your child get organized can make the process less intimidating for him.

Work with your child to create a schedule. Help him make a chart with each school’s deadlines. You’ll feel less helpless and you will be making a valuable contribution to his application process.

You can even help with the essays. If he thinks he has nothing to write about, that there’s nothing interesting about him, you can brainstorm ideas together. Pointing out some of his best qualities and recalling funny or interesting stories about his life can help generate essay ideas and boost his self-esteem.

Some students don’t want their parents involved at all. If your child is organized and getting his applications done, let him know that you admire his ability to do this for himself and you’re there to be a sounding board if he needs one. If you see him floundering and your attempts to help just make him more anxious, you might ask a relative, friend or college counselor to help him get on track.

You can also reassure your child that even though this is a stressful time, things will work out and he will go to college.

Audrey Kahane, MS, MFA, is a
private college admissions counse
lor in West Hills. She can be
reached at (818) 704-7545 or at
audrey@audreykahane.com.


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