There’s a Facebook group out there for parents of students who are in college or transitioning to college. Parents use it as a space to vent, find common ground, and ask advice. Frequently, parents post with questions about college, and other parents write in with their recommendations, eager to help others navigate a process that’s so complex as to feel insurmountable.
 
Here are some examples of advice given by various posters in the past week:
 
“AP tests and classes are tougher because school is trying to get them ready for the AP test in April. Freshman is pretty young to be taking AP. It doesn't matter how many APs she takes. Her un-weighted GPA matters more for college admission. She needs to keep her grades up.”
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“Ivy's [sic] have the advantage of connections, as do some elite schools. Also to factor is if your child wants to attend medical school (very competitive) then a name and the connections are worth it!”
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“Take both the SAT and ACT early and often. Scholarships and admissions are based on just the highest score on either test, and every point increase means an increase in scholarship money.”
 
What do all these well-intentioned pieces of advice have in common? They are wrong. Following this advice could/would leave to worse outcomes for the student (and family paying the tuition bill).
 
I want to use this post to give a strong caution in the crowd-sourcing of college admissions advice.  For whatever reason, there is a lot of misinformation out there, but no lack of people who are happy (albeit well-intentioned) in giving it. Following that misinformation could be to the detriment of the student. So what is a family to do? And where exactly can you get smart answers? Here are some ideas:

1. Talk to your high school counselor – Your counselor is your first point of reference for college counseling advice. If your school has a dedicated college counselor, then that’s your first stop. If you have a “regular” counselor (who does college plus everything else), first thank them – they are busy people who do good work. Second, ask their advice, too! I understand, however, that your counselor may be very busy with many students and may not have time to walk you through every step or give you one-on-one advice about your college list/testing/class choices. And sometimes your counselor may not be able to because she hasn’t been trained in college admissions counseling. But your counselor is still your first stop, and if you need more support or advice or knowledge than she can provide, she will let you know that, likely pointing you in a direction where you can seek out more information on your own.
2. The admissions officers at your colleges of interest – don’t be afraid to reach out. These are wonderful people passionate about providing good information and access (I know, I was one!). I think many students have a fear of asking a question because they think not knowing the answer is a sign of weakness that will tarnish their application once submitted. This is not true. Students, use the admissions officers at your colleges as resources to get  answers to questions about the process and the school/major/program you are interested in. One note of caution here: you’ll notice the advice is for students to reach out. Parents often want to do this for the student. Colleges may see this as a warning sign the student is not ready for the independence of college life. It’s hard, but the student has to be the one sending the emails/making the phone calls. And parents, we know when it’s you emailing from your student’s account – this is not our first rodeo (yes, that happens a lot!). :) 
3. Get advice from an independent college counselor -- An independent college can support families beyond what can be provided through school or other sources. Statistically, about 26% of students attending selective colleges use an independent consultant. However, as I remind families inquiring about services, this means most families do not. The process of applying to college and getting in is not an insurmountable task (even though I know it might feel that way), but you have to be smart about where you get your advice and be proactive about doing things right and doing them early. If you are considering a counselor, make sure he or she is a member of either the IECA or HECA. These are professional organizations that maintain high standards of membership (remember all that bad information being passed around out there? You won’t get that from a college counselor who belongs to HECA or the IECA).

 
I meet with many families during workshops, seminars, or in private consultation that report back information they heard elsewhere that is just flat out wrong. I don’t believe there should be a pay wall to getting smart information for college, which is why I find this so frustrating. If you ever have a question about college, whether you are a student on my “roster” or not, please send me an email. I am happy to answer questions. I started this business out of a passion for the power of higher education, and I believe all students deserve their best chance to get it. There are many sources of good information (high school counselors, admissions officers, college counselors), and what’s important is you find one. Resist the urge to crowd source, and empower your student to be a careful consumer and dedicated discoverer of his or her own information that will lead to the actualization of his or her own goals. 

Question: Who “wins” this game?
 
Player 1 was accepted into Harvard, his dream school.
 
Player 2 was denied from every highly selective school to which she applied. She also applied to and was accepted by High Point University, her safety school in a sea of “lottery schools” from which she was denied.
 
If we stop the game here, Player 1 is the clear winner. He has the acceptance to the prestigious university and the application plan that went according to plan. Player 2 is settling. She had an application plan that was not smartly put together, and she is dealing with the result.
 
But guess what? The “game” doesn’t stop there. And that’s because life doesn’t stop there. There is more to it than just getting in. Once a student gets in, he or she has to attend, work hard, interact skillfully with professors and peers, apply for and win research opportunities, pass classes, get internships…
 
What if we zoom forward three years from the scenario with which we started? What if we find out Player 2 is thriving? She is a “big fish in a smaller pond” about to do a semester in Florence with an internship for global marketing. She already has a job offer from her last internship in the summer, and she’s weighing that against the decision to continue on to graduate school. Possibilities abound. The failure she felt senior year being rejected from so many more prestigious colleges is just a blip in the past she doesn’t have time to dwell on.
 
Meanwhile, Player 1 has, amid the incredible pressure of his immensely talented peers and the increased expectations of college life, dropped out. He’s taking time off while his mother encourages him to transfer into the local state university so he doesn’t fall further behind. He wasn’t a good fit for the pressure, and he had no idea it was going to be that way. He had applied and decided to attend his first college because of the name recognition. “If you get in to Harvard, you go”, his dad had told him. So he went, and he failed. It was never a good fit.
 
Who is “winning” the game now?
 
There’s a bigger idea here that’s so important for students and parents to remember. They must remember the end goal. What is this all for? What’s most important in this process? Is it bragging rights about how selective a school you could get into? It shouldn’t be. Your likelihood of success is not correlated with the lower the admissions percentage of the school you attend.
 
Seniors, as you get your acceptances, think long term. Think realistically about your priorities. At Guru, we celebrate every success, not just the ones that come with single digit selectivity percentages, because we know we work hard to help families put together college lists that are based on substance—places our students will thrive academically, socially, and financially.  And when Harvard says yes to the right kid, we celebrate that, too! The same way we do for Ole Miss, Syracuse, Stanford and everywhere in between. 

Below please find a copy of the email we've sent out to the parents of the seniors with whom we work: 

By now, you have likely heard about the FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The FAFSA will open on October 1st this year, so this is a one month heads up so you can be prepared and ready to file when it opens. I'm going to use this email as an explanation of what the FAFSA is, when to file it, what to have ready, etc. 

What it is: "FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This form is used to determine the amount of money a family is expected to contribute to the price of attending a postsecondary institution. The results of the FAFSA are used in determining student grants, work study, and loan amounts."

Why it's important: Filing the FAFSA is important, regardless of whether or not you think you will qualify for financial aid. It's well worth your time to do so (plus it's easy, so no excuses). After you file the FAFSA, you will receive your formal financial aid offer. It's only then you will know how much your education is going to cost (this is a reason you should consider waiting to accept an admissions offer until after you receive the financial aid offer if finances are an important part of the equation). The FAFSA also serves as the paperwork necessary to qualify for federal loans (all students, regardless of income, qualify for some subsidized federal loans). The interest rate you will get is way better than the bank for these federal subsidized loans. 

What can I do right now? This year, there is no longer a PIN for the FAFSA; it has been replaced by what is called the FSA ID. The FSA ID is how you submit the FAFSA electronically. It serves as your certified digital signature. You can sign up for this now (and I recommend you do so). Both you and your student will need an FSA ID to complete the FAFSA. You can get that set up right now through this link:  https://fsaid.ed.gov/npas/index.htm 

When can I file the FAFSA? Starting October 1st, you will be able to use that FSA ID to complete the FAFSA. October 1 is the earliest you can complete the form (this is a much earlier deadline -- it used to be January 1. Parents who have filed before, take note!). I recommend doing it as soon after October 1st as possible. You do not need to have filed this year's​​​​ taxes to complete the FAFSA. Instead, you'll be using tax information from the most recently filed tax year (this is also a new change, called Prior-Prior-Year. You can read more about that here). The important thing is filing early. 

Where do I go to file the FAFSA? This is the link you can use to file the FAFSA starting in January: https://fafsa.ed.gov 

What do I need to have ready? 

• Your Social Security Number
• Your most recent federal income tax returns, W-2s, and other records of money earned. (Note: You may be able to transfer your federal tax return information into your FAFSA using the IRS Data Retrieval Tool.)
• Bank statements and records of investments (if applicable)
• Records of untaxed income (if applicable)
• An FSA ID to sign electronically.

If you have any questions about how to file the FAFSA, there are numerous free resources out there. I am including here a super in depth guide put out by a company called Edvisors, which specializes in college financial aid consulting. It's a terrific guide. 

For nuanced or unique questions, I would consult the website finaid.org. 

One more thing to be aware of with financial aid forms is that there are several colleges, especially private colleges, that require additional forms like the CSS profile or a university specific financial aid form. To check to see if any of your colleges require the CSS Profile (in addition to the FAFSA), you can check this link: https://profileonline.collegeboard.org/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv 

For every school to which you have applied, you should consult the school's financial aid webpage. Check the deadlines and requirements for each college. 

I hope your fall is off to a great start. I am thankful for so many things, and working with awesome students and families is one of the most important in my life. I truly love what I do and I am honored and thankful to you for allowing me the opportunity. 

Let me know if you have any questions! And feel free to forward this guide along to other families if they will benefit.

Thanks!

Erika

​Parents: you know this on a rational level. The day your child wakes up in his dorm room as a college freshman will not magically turn him into a responsible and self-sufficient adult. He won’t suddenly spring from him bed unprompted with his homework complete and go eat his Wheaties in the cafeteria. He has to learn to do that before he gets there. The person your child is at the end of high school is that same person that will start college. That means the habits they’ve cultivated, the skills they’ve learned, and the etiquette they employ (or fail to) are the tools they are equipped with to succeed in their new environment.
 
It’s your job as a parent to make sure they are ready, and in this case, doing more means doing less. As your child progresses through high school you need to do less in order to allow them to do more. This is called a graduated release of responsibility. It’s hard. It’s scary. It’s sometimes messy, but it’s necessary.
 
Not sure where or how to start? In our work with students we’ve identified a subset of skills we believe all college-bound students need in order to succeed.

1. Be in the habit of checking email daily. This is easy. Kids have phones on them. Help them set up a professional sounding email address and link it to their phone. What’s key, though, is having some meaningful information be sent via email. You can put in your child’s email address, for example, on the coach’s email list, or on the group emails sent from the high school counselor, or anything else. You can also email your child links to articles that are relevant to things you’ve discussed. If they are going to check it, there has to be information there worth checking. Cultivate that content for them to establish this habit.
2. Know how to keep their schedule. This is a big one. Kids can and should make their own appointments, know when those appointments are, and get themselves there on time. Kids need to learn to communicate with others to keep their commitments and prioritize their time accordingly. They will mess up; resist the urge to jump in and take over. We learn by doing, and that means mistakes. Mistakes are okay. Mistakes are good. Mistakes are learning.
3. Understand failure is normal. Failure is a normal part of life. But the perception of high-stakes in college admissions has many teenagers (and parents) petrified of failure. In business school, they teach you to pivot when you fail (because failure is more normal than success in business). Kids need to learn this in life, too. Failure is a sign to make changes, adjust accordingly, move forward in a different fashion, try something else. Failure is not a referendum on your propensity to succeed. Colleges don’t want perfect snowflakes (really). So embrace failure and teach your kids to pivot.
4. Think long-term. Teenage brains are hard-wired for short-term rewards. Model and practice goal setting, both short and long term. Teenagers are capable of doing it, but it doesn’t come natural to them, yet (not until their pre-frontal cortex is fully developed. This happens sooner for girls than boys).

Start now to help your student acquire these skills before you ship them off to college. Yes, college is a time for independence. But you have to equip them with the skills they need to thrive with that independence, first. Start releasing bits of independence to them gradually, knowing they will screw it up more than a few times. Then go practice your own long-term thinking by remembering it will all work out just fine in the end. Really.

Fear not, we have some ideas to get you started. To begin, brainstorm a list of stuff you need tickets for. Come up with at least FIFTEEN ideas. Why fifteen? Because we want you to move past the stuff everyone else is going to write about. Yes, you need a ticket for a plane to the Bahamas. I can only imagine how many vacation essays the UT Admissions Office is going to read this year… keep thinking.
 
And thinking….
 
And thinking. Are you at fifteen yet? Good. See if you can come up with three more (How does that saying go? If it doesn’t challenge you…?). :) 
 
Ok, so you have your list. Think about your most honest answer to the questions in the prompt. Where is it you would go? If, after brainstorming, it truly is the Bahamas, so be it. But beyond that answer is a why question -- why would you go there? What is it you would gain from the experience? How will your life be different after that experience? It's the depth inherent in your choice that's interesting (meaning what your choice says about who you are rather than where it is you will go). 
 
So, next to each answer for where you will go with your hypothetical ticket, write down a few words about why you would go there, and think about what your choice says about you. Then, here’s the trick, move the essay forward. That same big idea about why you would go there? Think about how that idea will influence your life in the future. Where else will that idea take you in the proverbial journey of life?
 
This isn’t an essay about where you want to go, it’s an essay about who you are. 
​