For Parents in the Process

I've been thinking about parents recently.  The college process is hard on them too; I know, I was there once, and the news wasn't always good.  As parents, most likely our first response is to get mad at the admissions office.  After all, don't they know how wonderful, creative, and interesting our children are?  How could they not see it??

This article, written by a parent and regional admission director at Lawrence University, provides a perspective for parents everywhere.  And my advice? Stop obsessing about "name" schools and lucrative majors and early decision and all those other things.  Celebrate your daughter's successes and mourn with her if the mail brings disappointment.  But more important, help her move on from there.  She WILL find a college that is the right place for her, and years from now that disappointment will be a thing of the past.

What really upsets me however, is when parents criticize their daughter for what she didn't do, and yes, every year there are some of those.  She didn't write the perfect essay; she shouldn't have wasted her time in the choir all those years.  Her activities should have been more important!  In reality, what is important is that she chose the activities that were important to her, the ones that gave her fulfillment and joy. Her essay topic was personal and meaningful to her, and trust me, she wrote multiple drafts and conferenced with her English teacher until they were both exhausted!  She has worked incredibly hard for the last six years to get to this point, and it's not her fault that she didn't get in.  It is actually no one's fault.

Colleges are funny, as the article implies, but they also care about your children.  It's just that they have their own institutional goals; they have their own priorities. They need athletes and philosophy or French majors, musicians and perhaps students from Maine or Alaska. They're looking for students that fit the culture of their campus, and in the end, it's a bit of a guessing game. And no matter how hard you try, you cannot predict what they will be looking for the year your daughter applies.

The only answer, I think, is to help your daughter be the best person she can be.  If she loves to dance, then let her dance! If she loves science, then encourage her to participate in every science-related activity she can find. And if she doesn't know what she loves? Then support her while she's trying the myriad of activities we offer at GPS.  She'll land on one eventually, and if she doesn't, that's okay too.  Many of us don't figure out our strengths until much late in life.  And sometimes we develop new ones we never knew we had! That's the beauty of it.

I have a button in my office that says "You are more than a test score."  I would add that you are more than the name of the college you eventually attend. I promise you that in the end, it's all good.  You were right, after all.  Your daughter is wonderful and creative and interesting and many more things.  She will be just fine. It's just the parents I worry about.