Air-time Reflections: More about Rankings and College Planning Mistakes
Friday, August 31st, 2007
Over the last week, I have had the good fortune of being able to talk about my new book, “Winning the College Admission Game,” with nearly twenty radio talk show hosts around the country. While no two conversations are the same, it seems that everyone wants to talk about college rankings, mistakes people make in the application process and the timing of the college planning process.
If you have read my postings last week, you know I am concerned with growing obsession on families seem to have with labels—and having the best. Not much has changed there except that I would urge you once again to look past the numbers to find the place that is best for you or your student. Rankings in and of themselves are not the issue. Taken to extremes, however, they become an intoxicant that affects the way you see the college picture and your place in it. I will refrain from saying more as this will be the topic of our first “Straight Talk About College Admission” teleseminar series on September 19 (9PM EST).
Talking about the biggest mistakes people make in college planning could take a while as there are plenty out there. For parents, though, it is often the inability or reluctance to turn the process over to the student. Quite often parents are consumed with the dreaming and scheming about college from the time their kids are born. And in some cases, they think they have figured out where the child will go to college and what they’re going to need to do to get him “in” before the he has begun grammar school! This becomes a problem for the student who at age 16 or 17 wants to become forming his own thoughts about college—and he has trouble finding his own voice in the matter. I talk about this in the first chapter of “Winning the College Admission Game” entitled “Adjusting to Life in the Passenger Seat.” In short, parents need to back off and students need to step up if college planning is to be productive in the long run.
Finally, talk show hosts are always curious to know when students should start thinking about and preparing for college. “When should this process start,” they ask. The answer is that students become candidates for college as soon as they set foot on their high school campuses in the freshman year. From that point forward, everything you do has a bearing on how you will eventually compete for admission. And I mention this not to create a panicked obsession with “doing all the right things” and packaging yourself for college. Bad idea! Don’t deny yourself a life well lived through your teenage years. Just understand that waiting until you are a junior or senior to find any focus in the classroom, or in life, can have a limiting effect on the college options you might eventually consider.
