How to help your senior apply to college without being arrested
Sometime in September of your child’s senior year of high school, you discover that the once little boy who couldn’t for the life of him remember his lunch box much less his homework will be expected to manage fourteen college applications, write six essays, obtain three recommendation letters, and decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life.
Who are we kidding here?
This is where mom steps in. More accurately, some moms. There are those mothers who secretly wish their children stay close to home, so they don’t lift a finger in the college application process.
These women become community college parents.
If that’s you, feel free to move on to the part of this newsletter offering shopping ideas. There is no judgment in this. Shopping is one of my favorite pastimes.
The college application process is one of the most precarious points in the parenting journey.
Just ask Lori Loughlin.
If you don’t know who she is you clearly don’t watch the Hallmark Channel. As a refresher, she is one of the many parents caught in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, where a number of wealthy parents paid to get their kids into prestigious universities. And USC.
(My apologies. That was a joke. I have lots of good friends who graduated from USC. They are very bright and successful people. Most of them.)
These parents thought they could buy their way into college for their kids. It doesn’t work that way. As these poor souls learned the hard way, this college application method will land you with an inmate number and an orange jumpsuit in federal prison.
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Which is unfortunate because orange isn’t everyone’s color.
Fortunately, there are perfectly legal ways to interfere with your child’s college application process.
The most popular is micromanaging every aspect of it.
Is this cheating the system and depriving your child of the satisfaction of taking his first meaningful step toward adulthood entirely on his own?
Certainly.
But at least you get to continue sleeping in your own bed and not in a federal correction facility.
In fairness to the kids, things are much tougher now getting into college than they were when we were kids. When I was a high school senior they wanted to know my grades, SAT score, and whether I could afford the tuition which was a paltry sum compared to today’s prices.
Today, they want to know if your child has founded a nonprofit, conducted original cancer research, and brought clean drinking water to a developing nation.
He’s seventeen.
Maybe eighteen if you redshirted him for kindergarten, which is an entirely different level of competitive parenting deserving of its own column.
Most of the time you’re just lucky if you can get him to bring the dirty dishes downstairs from his bedroom to the kitchen. Saving a developing nation seems like a pretty tall order for someone who has difficulty locating the dishwasher.
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When my oldest son was in ninth grade, he debated between starting a company or writing a bestseller to bolster his college application.
We had serious discussions about these options because I’m every bit as competitive as the next parent. In retrospect, I’m a little surprised that there aren’t more fourteen-year-olds on the New York Times bestsellers list.
One of the first opportunities for parental involvement is SAT and ACT test preparation.
Test prep courses are one of the initial ways parents can participate in the college application process.
We can't actually take the tests for our children, but we can certainly pay an obscene amount of money for someone else to teach them how.
I remember paying a hefty price for my youngest son’s private SAT and ACT tutor. The cost forced me to forgo a face lift for at least a decade, but it was worth it. He did well on both tests. Later, he casually informed me that he probably could have done even better if he'd completed all the homework the tutor assigned.
As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him take math practice tests.
Then comes the college essay.
This is the one area where you can have the most impact, particularly if you write the entire thing yourself. I’m not advocating this, but I’m simply pointing out that I’ve seen parents do just that.
And even when they aren't technically writing the essay, they're selecting the topic, constructing the outline, editing every paragraph, and suggesting a more compelling conclusion.
What better way for the Admissions Committee to learn about the transformative experience that shaped your child’s life than through the eyes of his mother?
Who, incidentally, remembers those experiences much more vividly than he does.
The irony is that the best essays are usually the ones the students write themselves.
Imagine that.
One of my sons wrote about a difficult decision he faced when choosing where to spend his senior year of high school.
He had the opportunity to attend a large public high school with a baseball team poised to compete for a state championship. The coach had recruited him heavily because the team needed a catcher.
But my son was also the captain of his small private school's baseball team.
He had to choose between the excitement of playing for a potential state champion and remaining loyal to the coach and teammates who were counting on him.
In the end, he stayed with his team.
He wrote about loyalty, friendship, and the importance of honoring a commitment, even when a more glamorous opportunity comes along.
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It was thoughtful, personal, and entirely his own.
I couldn't have written it better myself.
And believe me, I probably would have tried.
So good luck all you senior parents as you navigate the college admissions process.
Remember, it's your child's future, not yours. Your job is to encourage him, support him, and occasionally remind him that the application deadline is tomorrow. Preferably, without logging into his account and finishing the entire thing yourself.
And whatever you do, don’t let me see your mugshot any time soon.
