To Parents: Understanding College Admissions Stress

The college admissions process is a time of anxiety for both students and parents.  Parents of even the easiest adolescent find the college application process to be stressful.  Understanding the sources of stress can help them reduce the tensions that often arise at home.

Watching a child procrastinate as deadlines approach is not easy.  All appearances to the contrary, most students really do care.  For them, college is a tangible milestone, a real indication that they are growing up, and the application process becomes a kind of rite of passage.  College is seen as an opportunity to pursue academic interests and to try new things, and it is recognized as a bridge to their future.  They really do know that there is a lot riding on their application.  But there is also a real degree of fuzziness in their understanding of college, of what will happen there and how it differs from high school, and, I believe, there is a certain level of fear.  Think about it.  You’ve applied for jobs.  You’ve sold a product.  You’ve negotiated and closed a contract.  You know how to play the game.  For almost every student, this is the first time they have had to market themselves, and they have to do it with someone they do not know and probably have not met.  And the stakes are so very high.  Of course they are frightened. 

Let me try to paint this picture from a slightly different perspective.  Do you have to make cold calls?  How many times did you put off that first call because of fear of rejection?  Students are no different.  Rather than let procrastination be a source of stress, help your child organize those papers.  Create a viable schedule.  Be a resource, and do not let writing the essay and completing the application papers become a source of stress for you.

Some of the pressure parents and students feel is societal.  We live in a status symbol culture.  We have to drive the right car, wear the right clothes, and go to the right places.  Students know that they are supposed to go to the right college.  Even if they say they do not care about going to an Ivy League school, they see their friends applying to those schools.  Applying to or attending any other college can be a source of shame.   Don’t burden your child with the need to go to the right school.  Tell him/her that what defines ‘right’ is the college that best suits his or her needs at the moment.

Some students think they will be unhappy if they don’t get into their top choice.  Certainly they will be disappointed if that happens, but resiliency is a lesson that must be learned in life.  Have a conversation early on.  Tell your child that you hope for the best, but if things don’t work out that way, you know s/he will survive and be happy elsewhere.  Studies have shown that there is no connection between future happiness and the college that was attended, but going to the wrong school for the wrong reasons can cause all sorts of difficulty.

When a student enters 9^th grade, everything at school suddenly seems to become college centered.  “You need to take as many honors and A.P. courses as you can.”  “You’ve got to improve those SAT scores.”  “You need to take this subject for at least three years if you want to impress a college.”  Teachers can inadvertently pass on stress.  Those who teach Advanced Placement courses are evaluated, at least in part, on how well their students do on the test.  Whether intentionally or not, that pressure to excel is ever present in those classes.  Some days, it seems as if all that matters is college.  I hear this when a student tells me, “My teachers think their course is all that is important in life.”  Read between the lines and listen to what is really being said.  Talk with your child and provide a calming viewpoint that puts college into perspective.  Removing stress from your child means less friction at home.

Colleges themselves create pressure for both students and parents.  Recruitment is a high priority and begins for some students when they are in the 10^th grade.  They might be met at the airport and driven to the college.  After meeting the key people in the department and told all sorts of wonderful things, the student might be given tickets to a concert.  This seduction is hard to resist for anyone, let alone a fifteen- or sixteen-year old.  Publications are being sent earlier than ever, just after a student takes the PSAT.  There are so many choices available to students, and the process is overwhelming.  Rolling and early decision means the application process is accelerated.  It seems as if everything has to be finished yesterday.  Parents can play a very helpful role in acting as a sounding board for essays, keeping on top of deadlines, and being a voice of reason.

Students put pressure on themselves.  Walk into a student lounge, especially when the students are Juniors and Seniors, and what do you hear?  “My guidance counselor said I should apply to School X, but it’s not good enough.”  (That’s really hard to hear if School X just happens to be your reach school.)  “I am going to take the SATs again.  All I need is another 50 points to get a perfect score.”  (Imagine how the student who struggles to earn a score in the 500s must feel when hearing that kind of statement.)  Talk with your child.  Ask what other students are saying.  Give the opportunity to vent and to express anxiety.  A helpful line to use is, “College admissions is not about them, it’s all about you and doing what is right for you.”

I live and work in a competitive, well-to-do community, where students in elementary grades talk about the college they will attend.  They’re too young to understand what they are really saying, but this tells me that getting into the “right” college is very much on parents’ minds.  Parents can be a source of stress.

There are some aspects of the college application process that are appropriately worrisome.  Watching a child who pays more attention to preparing for tomorrow’s history test than to filling out application papers is always difficult.  Parents know that college means their child is about to leave the nest.  Most parents are concerned about how to pay the high costs of tuition plus incidentals.  That’s enough to give anyone a few sleepless nights.  Parents worry about whether their child will get into his or her first choice.  No one wants to see their child disappointed.  These worries are normal.  Sometimes, however, parents add unnecessary stress.

Every year, I encounter a parent who will only consider one college.  No other school is good enough.  Perhaps it was the school s/he attended or one that has name recognition.  The reality is that colleges change.  No school is the way it was twenty or more years ago.  One person’s fond memories won’t be another person’s reality. That is not how life works.  Applying to a school because it is well known is probably the last reason why a school should be selected.  Research has shown that the reputation of a college has little or no bearing on whether a person will be successful later in life.  The college that the parent is fixated on might not be appropriate for the student.  Accepting that the child has different aspirations and different talents can sometimes be very difficult for parents.  The question that I often ask is, “Whose life is it?” 

Sometimes parents think they should call the shots because they are paying the bill.  They want their child to attend a highly competitive, prestigious school.  The student wants to attend a smaller, more intimate school that offers a good education but without the high-octane pressure.  I’ve learned to listen to students.  They often know themselves better than their parents.  Parents who fail to hear what their children are saying can add to the stress and cause some very real problems in their relationship. 

My advice is to talk.  Start early and talk often.  I tell parents to share their thoughts and concerns, but also to listen to their children.  Be supportive and understanding, not autocratic.  Give the student time to internalize the message, and then re-visit it if necessary.  Work through the process together.  Of course there will be anxious moments, there always are, but talking really helps. 

Organizing Computer Files

If you take notes on your computer, if you use a computer to write your papers, if you use your computer to do homework, you need to know where you saved your documents.  Being unable to find a paper is unacceptable.

My Documents is the default location to which papers are stored.  I prefer to save them my desktop, where I can work on them and then drag them to their final destination. 

Create a folder called School.  Then create a separate folder for each subject.  A student should have separate folders for English, math, science, history, language, and any other subject you take.  Drag each of these subject folders into the school folder.

In each subject folder, subfolders for each topic or unit can be created.   For example, in the English folder, a student might have subfolders for Essays, Grammar and Spelling, Literature, and Tests and Quizzes.  In the Literature folder, there might be a subfolder for Hamlet, one for Grapes of Wrath, and another for poetry.  Each of these folders can have subfolders.  In the Hamlet folder, there could be a folder for Notes&Discussion and another for Papers. 

Seeing this schema presented visually can help some students understand the concept:

Imagine that you have been studying Hamlet and you wrote a paper about the impact of Hamlet’s murder of Pelonius.  Save the paper to the Desktop.  Give it a descriptive name.  Do not use symbols (slash marks, dashes, or periods) that will confuse the computer.   Do not choose English_Hamlet for the paper’s name.  You are going to put the paper in the English folder and you do not need to be redundant.  Instead, you might choose Hamlet&Pelonius as a title. 

If you are saving many exercises that bear the same name, you might use a name and date.  If you are studying Spanish, you will be given many vocabulary lists. You might title one list Vocab Oct 15.  The next day’s list would be Vocab Oct 16.  Both of these documents will be dragged into a folder called Vocabulary that will be found in the Spanish folder. 

Whether you keep these folders on your desktop or put them in My Documents or transfer them to a cloud storage system is up to you.  Many students prefer to keep the School folder on the desktop, where it is always in sight.  Seeing it reminds them they have to save and properly store every document so it can more easily be retrieved. 

You will be much less likely to lose a paper if you get used to organizing your papers this way.

Where Do You Study?

When I’m asked to help a student develop better organizational skills, I will ask, “Where do you do your homework?”  The majority of times the answer is, “On my bed.” 

The bed is not a great place to work.  It is the place that is associated it with sleep or maybe the place where books are read for pleasure.  It is not associated with serious work.  Also, students are tired after a long day at school.   Without getting into all the biochemistry, when they lie down on the bed to do their homework, a hormone can be released that tells the brain, “Relax.  We’re getting ready to go to sleep.”  That is not the right signal to send when doing homework. 

Whether sitting up or lying down, penmanship will suffer when we write while on a bed.  [A bit of aside: “But it is only homework,” I’m told.  This is an example of stinkin’ thinkin.’  Ultimately, it is self-damaging.  Now counseling enters into the tutoring processing.  I begin the process of changing the student’s self-image and goals.  We move from a position of, “I don’t care,” to “Okay, I’ll compromise,” to the ultimate goal – “I’m willing to approach my work in a serious and organized manner.”  Parents often complain that their child’s teachers don’t teach these skills.  Of course they don’t.  Some don’t have the counseling skills, but most do not have the time required to change behaviors.  Teachers are really over-worked these days; it is all they can do to teach their classes and keep up with the other demands on their lives.]

I recommend studying at a desk.  To help a student get started, we’ll sometimes draw a picture of the desk and set it up on paper so that it becomes an effective work station.  The second-best place to study is a table in a common area in the home.  The kitchen is the place most easily chosen.  Sometimes having a parent present to provide structure and help a student develop self-discipline is necessary, but the goal will be to help the child grow so s/he can study independently of adult supervision.  The problem with studying in the kitchen is that there are too many distractions.  People come and go, someone is cooking and making noise, the phone rings… all of which interfere with a student’s ability to concentrate. 

After each assignment is completed, it has to be put away and the work area returned to its original condition.  When the student takes a break, I recommend turning around (actually, I recommend standing up and walking away from the desk in order to oxygenate the brain).  The desk is the study area.  The rest of the room is the non-work area.  Associating the desk with work is going to produce results that are more effective than studying on the bed.