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VISITING COLLEGES AND DECISION MAKING

Spring has become a customary time for students to visit colleges. The purpose for such visits can be varied. Middle school students often visit along with their teachers in the hope that visits will motivate students to aspire toward a college education. These visits are especially helpful to parents who have themselves not had a college education. Parents may wish to recommend such visits to their children’s schools.
Ninth and tenth graders often visit colleges informally with their parents to become familiar with the varying atmospheres. Parents who have been to college typically include colleges that they attended in that tour. Juniors and seniors are more likely to visit colleges in a directed effort to help them make decisions about where to apply or attend.

Although the purposes of the trips may be different, the steps toward organizing a trip can be quite similar. Visits are more effective if you and your children do some advance planning.

Before You Go

Consider the geographic area you may be able to include in your trip to determine if more than one visit is possible. Families often extend business trips or family vacations to include college tours. Library or Internet research is a first step to help determine which colleges would likely accept your student. Average SAT and ACT scores, acceptance criteria, and tuition costs are available in college selection books or on the web. Families can contact colleges to determine if specific visitation programs are available.

Use a brainstorming approach to create both parent and student questions. After you’ve brainstormed, select and prioritize the “must ask” questions. For example, if your teenager knows what he or she is going to major in, you’ll want to know if the college has a good department for that particular career interest.

During Your Visit

Students should try to sit in on at least one class in an area of interest. They should find other students to talk to about such topics as (1) class size, (2) course selection, (3) availability of advisor and professor time, and (4) special interests including dorms, social life, etc.

Try to talk briefly to several professors in a potential major. You can ask about the percentage of graduates that are able to find jobs upon graduation. Find out about counseling and tutoring services. If you’re interested, check on availability of a campus religious group. Be sure to take notes or record what you hear. Information often becomes muddled and confused by the time you’ve visited two or three colleges.

When You Return

Organize the information you’ve received by writing down the answers to each question you’ve asked for each college. You may find some missing information that you may wish to check back with the college about. Permit your teenager to talk about impressions so you can help sort out the ones that will really make a difference. See the example of a decision matrix on the next page to help you decide where to apply.

You could add many questions to your matrix, and even add such additional considerations as tuition, distance from home, cost of living in dormitories, dormitory policy on quiet hours, and cafeteria options. Recognize that your teenager may have hidden motivations like “my friend may be going there” or “my guidance counselor went to school there and loved it.” Encourage discussion about these subtle considerations so that they don’t dominate objective decision making.

Of course, there are many good options for colleges, but visiting a campus often helps families make more comfortable decisions.

Organizing Your Information

Helping Students Choose a College

Now that your son or daughter has been accepted to colleges, you and they will need to make the choice of which college to attend. Hopefully, your teen will have several to choose from. Here’s a step-by-step program for making this exciting choice, which will affect the direction of your teen’s adult life.

1. The family and the student can brainstorm for all the possible criteria to use in evaluating each college. Here are some possible criteria: Cost, size of college, major, distance from home, proximity to large city, etc. You’ll find many more.
2. List your criteria in order of importance to you. You may have some that are tied for importance, and you may drop some from your original list because they’re not important enough to you.
3. Assign numerical weights to each criteria depending on their importance. Use numbers between 1 and 3 to avoid making your evaluation too complex. Higher numbers represent greatest importance to you.
4. Make a matrix for listing colleges that your student has been accepted at the left, and the criteria and their weight numbers across the top.
5. Rate each college using numbers between 1 and 3 for each criteria.
6. Working down each column, multiply each college rating by the weight for each criteria. Working across for each college will cause bias.
7. Add up the scores across to determine what colleges score highest.
8. Use the matrix and the total scores for guidance as your family discusses the choices together.
9. Be willing to add other criteria suggested by family members, and change weights if necessary. Redo the matrix and the totals if you and your parents have decided to add or change criteria.
10. Don’t feel bound by numbers. The matrix is meant to help students and families focus their thinking for discussion, not to provide an absolute choice.

Decision-Making Matrix

*Cost factor should include actual costs, scholarships available, etc. High numbers indicate most reasonable costs; low numbers, most expensive.
**Although this score indicates rank by your criteria, further discussion with your parents may encourage you to weight criteria differently or add other criteria, which could change total scores.
( ) indicates college rating for criteria; number outside ( ) equals college rating times criteria weight.

Student Stepping Stones
Guidelines to Success for New College Students

Each year a new group of students go off to the exciting and challenging experience of pursuing their college education. They’re faced with more independence than they’ve ever had before. Of those who are accepted for the challenge, only about half succeed to graduation. Based on my clinical experiences with bright, capable students who have dropped out or were put on probation, I have put together some guidelines that can ensure a college student’s success. You may want to read these or give them to a new college student you know and love.

1. Never miss a class, no matter how boring or irrelevant you believe it to be. You've paid for this education, so you might as well get your money's worth. The lecture or explanation you miss may become the exam question you don't quite remember learning.
2. Plan to study at least two hours for each hour of class time. Colleges recommend this guideline; take their advice literally.
3. Structure your study time on your organizer, schedule, or calendar for at least one week ahead of time. Visualizing the time allocated for study will lessen the pressure you feel.
4. If you're struggling with course content, find help before you fail. Writing labs, tutors, study groups, and counseling abound on college campuses. No one is going to take you by the hand for help; you will have to initiate the search, but there is plenty of willing and free help available. Even A students often request tutoring.
5. You may be disappointed in your grades, even when you've studied hard and have always been an excellent student. Try not to compare yourself to others who may have better grades. Instead, concentrate on studying more effectively and efficiently and doing your best.
6. Schedule exercise at least three times weekly. Daily exercise is even better. Exercise will help you feel alert, in control, and will provide wonderful tension release. Exercise is also a natural antidepressant.
7. Plan for brief social time daily and a little more on the weekend. Good college students do not take entire weekends off. Don't over-allocate your social time. There will always be more than you plan for. Alcohol, drugs, and study don't mix.
8. Develop and keep regular healthy eating and sleeping habits as much as possible. Fatigue and poor nourishment will only increase your feelings of being overwhelmed.

Parent Pointers
Setting Expectation for College

If your child appears to have college-level ability, make the assumption early that college will be an automatic part of their education. This assumption won’t become a pressure for them if they’re good students. If they become accustomed to the idea that education is a long-term process, they won’t be as likely to be tempted by short-term gratifications, such as instant cars and expensive clothes.

Be sure that your message about college and careers is no less challenging for females than it is for males. The concept that girls should “marry their education” is outdated and inappropriate to our present recognition of the capabilities of females.

Don’t assume that adolescents are able to make all college decisions. Certainly they should be an important part of the choice. The economic component of college is the one in which parents should take a most important advisory role. Young people don’t have a great deal of financial experience at age 18 and may burden themselves with long-term debt for the sake of short-term peer status. Provide both financial advice and limits.

Recognize that acceptance to colleges and college choices become status symbols many high schools. Be sensitize to the peer pressure your children may be feeling, and help them make decisions that are reasonable—not just geared to earning peer status. Remind them that their current boyfriend or girlfriend should not become the sole reason for choosing a college.

Understand that there is great competition for acceptance at high-status colleges. Your children could be rejected even when they’re very capable. If your expectations are too high, your children may feel impossible pressure.

Discuss with your adolescent the adjustments that are typical for college students. If you’ve attended college yourself, that’s quite easy. If you haven’t, you and your children may want to talk with a college counselor. College students should be prepared to understand some important issues including (a) college competition, (b) the large time requirement for study, (c) the availability of, and the not unusual need for, counseling or tutoring during college, and (d) the many different life styles they’ll encounter in college.