Am I The Dean Of Admissions Or A Frantic Mom?

Are you as stressed out as I am?

Even though I’ve worked in college admissions for more than 20 years, I find myself in an incredibly surreal place these days. You see, my oldest son, Matthew, is a high school senior, and for the first time, I’m getting a glimpse of the college admissions and financial aid process from the perspective of an anxious parent and eager student. It’s a bit terrifying!

 Did we him to find the “right” college?

What if he finds the “perfect” school and I can’t afford to send him there?

Will I ever be able to look at my son again without getting all teary-eyed at the prospect of sending him off to college?

Questions like these keep me awake some nights. There's so much at stake. Part of me wants to fast-forward to next fall so I can see how it all turns out. But the other part of me wants to freeze time so that the last few months of his senior year go by very, very slowly.

“Coffee-table cache”

Since the spring of my son’s junior year, we’ve been hot and heavy into the college search. We researched schools online, looked them up in umpteen guide books, stopped in for campus visits, got referrals from his guidance counselor and teachers, listened to the “word on the street” and followed our instincts. Matthew put together a list of colleges he wanted to apply to and spent the summer working on his college essay and the early fall polishing it, showing it to teachers and double-, then triple-checking it for typos and punctuation.  He created a Common Application profile, answered dozens of questions, gathered materials, and sent out the first batch of applications. We spent weekend after weekend touring colleges up and down the east coast, and even ventured west a time or two.  Big schools.  Small schools.  Private schools.  Public  schools. Liberal Arts schools. Professional Schools.  We covered all our bases. We thought we were done.

But then he started thinking … are there a few more schools he should have looked more closely at? Was it too late to apply? So he quickly sent out a couple more applications.

The search for the “Holy Grail”…namely the ‘perfect’ school is a fool’s game.  With over 4,000 colleges and universities out there to choose from, there simply isn’t one school that is right for each kid.  There are dozens of schools that will be solid fits for our kids.

As a dean of admissions, I visit high schools across the country and often hand out a blank sheet of paper to high school juniors, giving them 20 seconds to write down the names of the first 20 colleges they can think of.  There is an enormous amount of overlap on their lists.  They almost all have the same ‘name-brand’ schools written down, with a few minor variations depending on which college sports teams they follow.

The lesson to be learned here is that they all think that if they don’t get admitted into one of these instantly recognizable schools, their chances for success are dramatically reduced.  But I’m going to tell you, that’s simply not true. It ALMOST doesn’t matter which college they go to…almost. What matters most…where the biggest and most meaningful differences are…lie in the very fact that they earned the college degree…not which school they earned it from.

That’s not to say that attending an elite, name-brand institution doesn’t open doors.  Sure it does.  What I am saying is that there are other roads that lead to the same destination and we ought to help take some of this pressure off the shoulders of our kids, and ourselves, when we help them to pick the college that is right for them.

We on Long Island are particularly vulnerable to this ‘coffee table cache’ way of thinking. We feel such enormous pressure as parents to send our kids off to the kind of school that gets the “Oh my goodness!!!!!  That’s an amazing school!!!  You must be so proud!!!” reaction from our friends (and our mother-in-laws!) when we let them know where our children are going to school.   We don’t want to face the “Hmmm…I haven’t heard of that school….I’m sure she’ll be happy there” reaction.

Suze Orman, financial analyst extraordinaire, likes to say, “We spend way too much money trying to impress people that we really don’t care about!”  The woman’s got a point.

Take a minute to inhale … then exhale … then just be proud!

 At the end of the day, worry less about where they’ll go.  You really can’t make a wrong decision.  And don’t forget to take a moment to reflect on all the work, effort and accomplishment it took to get our kids to this point…on the verge of graduating from high school, with the determination to continue their educations and earn their college degrees. 

Not bad, parents … not bad at all!

 My son will undoubtedly be horrified to know I’ve started a blog to share some of his journey…but frankly, it’s my job as a parent to embarrass him every now and again. In all seriousness, as I reflect on this time and this major milestone we are about to achieve as a family, I wanted all of you to know I’m right there with you.