Helping Your Child Choose a College

In some ways you and your college bound youngsters have been narrowing the college selection process down for years. Together you have watched college football or college basketball on television, you’ve bought your kids hats, sweatshirts and tees with college names and logos prominently displayed. You may even have driven by or stopped briefly at a college campus or two as part of a family trip or vacation. But sooner or later the casual interest becomes rabid concern and you and your children recognize the seriousness of the choice and the shortness of the time left to make it. To help students make their final selection colleges deluge them with information about every conceivable aspect of college life. You really have all the information you need somewhere there in the pile. What you need to do with your son or daughter is to help them to ask and answer the right questions.

1. Does this school provide for your academic interests and prepare you for the future you wish to pursue? While this seems the single most important question high school students can ask about colleges they are considering, too often it takes second place to other concerns. Certainly there are many features that play into your final decision. Some of them will involve finances, potential scholarships or student employment opportunities. Some will be more cosmetic involving the geography, location and size of an institution. Some considerations may even include just a gut feeling about a place based on a single visit. All need to be thrown into the mix. But, at the end of the day and more importantly at the end of the four years if the college you choose doesn’t prepare you to step out into the world reasonably prepared to enter the field of your interest or to pursue more studies in your field at the graduate level then there will be some serious disappointment that might have been forestalled by more careful consideration. For young people who have definite career plans, a discussion with a college dean or simply reading the academic information that you received should be sufficient to answer this question. For those less certain of their future plans its important to select a school that provides a variety of career training path. When you pick a college you effectively pick the academic choices that will be available to you in the next four years. Despite all the other things that will be part your college life, academics are what you are paying for. Make sure you are going to pay for what will be of benefit to you in the long run.

2 How well does this school provide for your non-academic interests? In some ways college life can be broken down into two parts: academics and everything else. Once you ;have narrowed your college search down to four or five schools that fit your academic criteria, it’s time to look at “everything else”. The important thing here is not to so overwhelmed by the total picture of a college that you don’t seriously investigate the areas of interest most important to you. If you love tennis, drama and community service, don’t be side-tracked by pictures of huge crowds at college sporting events that seem to be having a marvelous time. Look for what you like and make sure there is enough of what you like to really satisfy the non- academic side of you for the next four years.

3 What is the worst feature of this school and can you cope with it for four years? In reviewing schools either on site , on line or in college catalogs , you are bound to encounter features about each school that you just plain don’t like. It’s too big, too small, too preppy. The architecture is strange, what’s up with all the statues, you have to take stairs to go anywhere. Every young person has a subconscious list of deal busters. Only the student to be knows what’s on that list. Helping your son or daughter to talk about the negative features of each school on their short list can lead them to ferret out hidden deal busters and narrow their selection list just a little bit more.

4. Where will you be when you wake up in the morning? The excitement of college selection sometimes passes by the more mundane aspects of everyday living. Not only do young people not always understand what theya are leaving behind, they may not give much consideration to the environment into which they are moving. Sometimes the result can be serious culture shock. Conversation which leads your son or daughter to consider not just the “beautiful campus” but also where it is situated can be eye opening . A young person who has lived for 18 years in a rural area should do some serious thinking before enrolling in a city college. People who have gone to sleep to the hum of traffic may be totally out of their element on a magnificent campus in the middle of nowhere. Giving serious thought to where you will be when you wake up can head off a lot of post enrollment discomfort.

5. Who will be there when you get there? An important part of college education is the people you meet in the four years you are there. For this reason it is very important to give some serious thought to the composition of the student body of any school on your selection list. Whe you get to this school, who will you find waiting to meet you? Will there be people who share your interests and ideals? Will everybody be just like you or not like you at all? Does the student body have enough diversity to help you grow? Who will you with your background, coming from your high school experience, your family, your part of the country fit in? Take a very good look at the college population break down. Is this the kind of population that will help you to grow but still provide you with a comfort zone for learning.

Choosing a college is a very serious business which often has life altering consequences. What you learn, skills you develop, parochialism you overcome, personal growth you achieve are traceable to this one basic choice. Before your son or daughter with your guidance makes this momentous decision make sure they’ve asked themselves the right questions.