The College Search: Whose Journey Is It?

My kids aren’t at the college search stage yet, but I’m close enough to be frightened by parents who make the process seems all-consuming. For some, it seems to be the high school version of the elementary science fair project. Sure, your 8-year-old kid’s project looks amazing and might rake in thousands of dollars in a Kickstarter launch, but did he really wire/code/build that thing all by himself? For the record, my kids’ projects did not stand out, but they were 100% kid completed!

I recently attended my college reunion and talked with a friend who is remarkably hands-off with her daughter’s current college search. It was such a refreshing conversation that I expanded on it in an interview that I’m sharing with you here. I recognize that college is years away for many of you, so I’ll be back next week with part 2 of this interview that delves further back and looked at how her kids reached this level of independence. I’m not sure that my kids are ready for everything her daughter has taken on, but I am open to the possibility!

Elephant Mamas: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Kim: I am a 47 year old married mother of two teenagers. I teach Spanish at a public high school in San Francisco so I am basically surrounded by teenagers 24/7. I love working with teenagers because they are a crazy and vulnerable bunch all wrapped up in one ever-changing hormonal body. Outside of my job, I love to travel with my family, go hiking with friends, eat my way through San Francisco, and read.

Elephant Mamas: Your approach to your daughter applying for college is to have her really drive the process. Can you describe what this looks like related to the tests and applications? 

My daughter attends a large public high school in San Francisco that you have to test into in order to enroll. Because of this, there is a lot of peer pressure and talk about the college process. While this environment can be stressful, it also makes it so that I don’t have to be the one bugging her about it. She is the one that came home from school as a junior and said, “I’ve signed up to take a practice ACT, can you pay for a prep class?”.  I don’t have any proof on this, but a lot of my friends with boys say this is more of a girl thing. While girls can be more competitive with each other, they also might share more and discuss the topic of college more so than boys do.

Because she has always gone to public schools, I did splurge for a private college counselor to help guide my daughter through the process. I did not want to be the one nagging her to write her essays etc. I also felt like it would be less stressful for her to have to fight for attention from the one counselor who serves 500+ students at her school. We met with one counselor who works mostly with small, private high school students. She was not a good fit because she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the fact that my daughter wanted a big, public university and perhaps did not want to take calculus as a senior. The next person was a much better listener and gave helpful advice without judgment. Since the first meeting early last year, I have exchanged maybe two emails with this person. It has all been between her and my daughter. I have not read one essay or personal statement. The only thing I have done is made suggestions on possible topics to write about and explained that she might want to spend some time on a school’s website so she can write something coherent about why she wants to go to school X. Even with that, my fallback is always, “see what your counselor says.” It’s been money well spent. I remember all the fights my sister and my mom got into way back when during her college process. It’s been great to take myself out of the equation. I wanted to be the sympathetic listener, not the nag or backseat driver.

Elephant Mamas: What about choosing the schools?

Kim: As for her choice in schools, I think it sort of drove itself by what she felt was lacking in her high school (school spirit and a sense of community) and then wanted in a university (big schools with rah rah sports and a lot of extracurriculars). She also knew from early on that she wanted to go to a different part of the country. She has chosen mostly midwest Big 10 schools because she has a connection to the area through my side of the family. We did go on 5 official school tours (2 were small schools that I didn’t think she would like, but I wanted to rule out the smaller sized schools and they were geographically desirable so no extra money spent). We toured University of Minnesota when we were actually there on vacation, and made a quick road trip from there to University of Wisconsin. The only school we spent money to fly to was Purdue. The rationale for that one was that it was school she had a good chance of getting into and so we wanted her to have seen it if it ended up being her only option. She did an all day preview day there last summer where she took workshops with other high school students and learned more about the school. They also had workshops for parents to go to which was really helpful to know what kinds of questions to ask in order to help your child find what she wants and take advantage of different opportunities offered at different schools (for example: living and learning communities, picking a major, internships, paying for school etc.). She did a similar preview day at the University of Minnesota (parents weren’t a part of that one). We have told her that if she has choices once acceptances come in, we will let her fly out to see the schools while school is in session. It’s hard to get a sense of how university life would be during the summer. Even the big universities were pretty dead in the summer when we visited.

Elephant Mamas: And the final decision? 

Kim: The final decision will be hers, although if anyone offers her merit money, we might help sway her in that direction, all things being equal. I think because she’s applying to schools that are in many ways similar, she will be happy at any of them.

Elephant Mamas: Did you have your own dreams for what this post-high school time would look like for her? Are you okay with her choosing something different than you would have?

Kim: No, but I have big dreams about what it will look like for my husband and me – ha! The one thing we always say about her is that she never fails to surprise us in positive ways, so I think it’ll be really fun to watch her evolve. We are different in lots of ways and that’s a good thing. The college I went to was a good fit for me, but would not be for her and that is just fine. I went to a talk once given by the author and psychologist, Madeline Levine, who wrote The Price of Privilege. She recounted this story of a woman who was really upset that her son didn’t get into University of Michigan (I think). The whole family had gone there and the woman was beside herself. Dr. Levine asked where her son was ending up, and the woman said, “University of Wisconsin”. Dr. Levine then asked, “Is he happy about it?”, to which the woman wailed, “Yes!”. Dr. Levine then asked, “So what’s the problem?”

Kim closed with the following line, which I think is worth for all of us to remember in every stage of parenting. “It’s my daughter’s journey, not mine.”