Face Down Your Top Four College Fears And Help Your Student Succeed!

You want your student to get into a good college, have a fantastic college experience and find a rewarding career – all on an affordable budget! 

But where do you start sorting through the overwhelming steps of the college preparation and application process?  

After all, with 3,500 colleges nationwide, and tuition costs alone ranging from $23,410 a year upwards of $46,272 and up, there’s a lot at stake!

In my 20 years of work as a Certified Educational Planner, I’ve found that the top four fears that most concern parents are:

1.       If my student doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, how can he pick a major that will lead to a solid career?

2.       Will my daughter find a job in her field after graduation?

3.       Can I afford to send him to the school of his dreams?

4.       Will my daughter incur so much debt that she will end up living at home again?

This blog post series is designed to examine each of these concerns and give parents some solid strategies to lead to their student’s success. Today's blog post will deal with the first question:

1. If my student doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, how can he pick a major that will lead to a solid career?

Have no fear! Think back to when you were 17. Did you know exactly what you wanted to do and did your life unfold as you expected it to? 

One of the best ways to help your student identify his interests is to encourage him to think about what he is good at and what he likes to do.

Is he a hands-on learner? Does he prefer to work alone or in groups? Does he prefer to learn by doing or from practical experience? Is he more of a theory or application person? 

Simply asking him these questions won’t get to the answers you seek because teenagers, although self-involved, are not usually self-aware. What does that mean? It means that they don’t tend to think deeply about the big questions like:

·         Who am I?

·         What makes me happy?

·         How do I learn?

The best way to answer these questions is not by direct questioning, but through careful observation on your part. As you watch your son take apart the engine of the car, for example, comment on the fact that he really seems to enjoy working with his hands.

Ask if he thinks this has something to do with his desire to know how things work or more that he likes to solve the puzzles of how they are put together. When he tells you that he does not enjoy chemistry class but loved biology, ask why he thinks this might be. Is it because biology is a more visible science and chemistry more theoretical?

Does he have a facility for foreign language but has no idea what he can do with it? Point out the opportunities in our global economy for those who are multi-lingual.

Career Assessments are Useless without Feedback

One of the ways I do help my students to identify their passions is to administer the Strong Interest Inventory and, often, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Many high schools also administer a version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, but they frequently don’t review the results with the student.

Career assessments without the crucial element of follow up is a waste of time for the student and money for the school district.  One student I worked with resisted taking the assessment because of his negative experience taking the MBTI on the Naviance College & Career Readiness Platform at his school.

None of the career options presented to him had rung true, or were things that he saw as leading to a successful life. No one explained to him about personality preferences (for example, one is not an ESTJ but one shows a preference for that personality style in personal interactions).  As a certified career coach, I’m qualified to have these discussions with your student over the many months we typically work together. This offers him a chance to ask questions as they develop and as he grows and matures.

Watch for our next blog post on "Will my daughter find a job in her field after graduation?"

Planning for College: It's never too early!

Today's announcement by the Princeton Review that they are entering the educational consulting field is a terrific addition to the college planning landscape. I know that this view from an educational consultant like me may seem odd, but let me explain. I believe that the more information available to students and their families, the better prepared they are to make wise choices in the process.

What are the different ways in which families can get information about the process and how do they differ? Keep in mind that this process is primarily the student's but it is important to teach the student  how to do the proper research. It is not just looking through college guides or making random visits to colleges whose names everyone knows. The college landscape is broad and there are many wonderful schools which might provide a better social, emotional, and academic fit for the student than the more well-known institutions. In some ways, this is comparable to randomly reading the multiple listing service lists of houses for sale and focusing only on one neighborhood in a city thereby losing the better deal on a more suitable home that is just around the corner. This is where independent educational consultants can provide more individualized services than can the more impersonal class that focuses on process which are offered by large firms.

The independent educational consultant takes the time to get to know the student and the family. S/he really listens to what both the parents and student want included in the consideration of a college. It is usual for consultants to have the student take one or more career assessments and to explain the results in an effort to increase the student's self-awareness which will lead to the ability to make better choices in the long term. Even if you, as a parent, are having difficulty recognizing that your student has the ability to develop self-awareness, I am sure you can see the benefit of exposing him or her to doing so.

Managing the process is also a part of what the educational consultant does with the student. It is often easier to have an adult other than the parent do this because the relationship is less emotionally laden than the parent/child relationship at this stage in the family's life. Most educational consultants have at least some background in family psychology and, although we are not therapists, we do know how to see all sides of an issue and to maximize the relationship.

Finally, and this is the most valuable part of the process which the independent educational consultant offers, knowledge of a wide range of colleges which might provide a good fit or match for the student. We get this knowledge by visiting colleges, attending professional conferences, and keeping our fingers on the pulse of the changes in higher education. All this comes at a price and it is this expertise for which you pay when you hire an educational consultant. In much the same way as a concierge doctor caters to the needs of individual patients, the educational consultant caters to the needs of a small group of clients at any one time. In the former scenario, the patient pays more for this service than does the patient who has an HMO; in the educational consulting world, individual service comes at a higher price than that offered by anonymous large companies. In the past, the high school counselor had the time to do some college counseling but that is becoming more difficult as counselor caseloads become increasingly more unmanageable as school districts continue to cut budgets. In addition, it is a rare Masters in School Counseling program that offers even one course in college counseling. The independent educational consultant has a variety of ways to learn how to effectively deliver services to families and the motivation to do so.

The bottom line is that you should find the help you need at whatever price point you can afford to help your student make informed choices. There is no need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to do this. Most independent educational consultants charge relatively modest fees and do a great deal of pro bono or sliding scale work in their practices. You never know until you ask.