Your college freshman is finally home after fall semester. He seems happy to be home, but not eager to return to school for spring. Sometime between handing you an oversized duffle of filthy laundry, recovering from final exam sleep debt, gobbling up Mom comfort food as an alternative to pizza, lighting the Menorah or trimming the Christmas tree, your student casually announces: “I think I want to transfer.”
Grove’s 5 reasons that justify transfer are: financial necessity, academic upgrade, specialized major (I would expand that to include sports or arts programs) , family obligations, or social situation (I would include overall atmosphere). 5 “bad” (misguided) reasons to change schools are: love, your school is too hard, you’re homesick, you hate your roommate, or you hate your professors.I’ll comment on the reasons that are not self-explanatory.
Social situation that justifies transfer would be a true mismatch between a student’s temperament and a school’s overall atmosphere. Obvious examples: a serious student feels overwhelmed by a toxic, 24/7 partying environment, or a teen who enjoys work/play balance feels too pressured in a fiercely competitive pre-professional school.
Less obvious examples: a teen with a conservative upbringing is painfully disconnected on a far-left campus; a student of color feels no sense of community in a school lacking diversity; a person from a cosmopolitan area feels too isolated from entertainment venues on a remote rural campus; a kid who is wild about spectator sports feels unsatisfied in a school with no atheltics emphasis; a teen from a close-knit high school feels lost in a huge, annonymous public institution.
We are not talking about minor adjustments. A key college growth challenge is learning to adapt to new situations and appreciating people with different backgrounds and viewpoints. But most of us have been in environments at some point in life where we felt completely misplaced, like a fish out of water. That’s what I’m talking about.
College is such a highlight of one’s life, where one finds lifelong friends, forms key dating relationships or chooses a spouse, and selects one’s young adult career. Not to mention it is a huge financial investment, perhaps $50 grand a year! Why spend four years in a place where you won’t thrive and may be absolutely miserable?
The most tricky, self-deceptive reason for transfer is being in love. Young people under 21 are still wrestling with the intensity of raging hormones, in conflict with the yet not fully mature frontal lobe that controls executive function and decision-making. This reality is described in lay terms in The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids by Barbara Strauch.
Worse, an older adolescent’s identity is still in tremendous flux, when it comes to academic and career interests as well as key relationships (or even sexual identity). No wonder it’s tricky!Erik Eriksen asserted that the capstone developmental task of adolescence is forming an authentic identity, during which a young person may be vulnerable and confused until fully establishing his own individuality.
Navigating this morass effectively requires educating oneself in an environment that offers many alternatives to explore, for fields of study, career options, or friendship and dating opportunities. Limiting oneself too soon in any area is usually viewed (at least years later) as a mistake.
Am I saying that one should never make an educational or professional decision with a “significant other” in mind? No, but college is too early, because a student is still building the foundation of his personal, academic and career equity. And while rare, long distance relationships can work; I know several lifelong happily married couples who have proven it.
An overall theme of these 5 good, 5 bad reasons to transfer is: only transfer for “big picture” reasons that can’t be changed by staying. If a student doesn’t get along with one roommate, get another. But if a student can’t stand the whole campus culture, or the family can’t afford the school, or they don’t have enough courses in one’s desired major, it makes sense to consider transfer. Stay tuned: in future posts we will discuss how to go about it.
December 15 is the day when many colleges notify Early Decision and Early Action applicants of acceptance, deferral or denial. Some schools notify a few days earlier, such as Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn, and Georgetown University. In recent posts, I have given specific next steps for dealing with Early Decision acceptance, Early Action acceptance, or early deferral/denial. I invite you to read the post that applies to your family’s situation.
Overall, expect this day to be a roller coaster ride for your teen. Even if her personal experience is one of elation and relief, some of her peers will be dealing with disappointment, continuation of tense waiting and prolonged acceptance stress, or confusion about next steps. Friendships may become strained. Today will be a test of self-esteem, resilience, self-control, grace and groundedness.
As a parent, you can help your student take the long view, the high ground, and most of all: a low profile. Caution her not to get caught up in the senior class drama! As they say to horses, Run your own race and keep those blinders on. Everybody’s situation is unique. By April, most students will have an outcome with which they will be quite pleased.
After family time and a bit of R&R, here are some tips on activities you can encourage your high school student to pursue during winter break, divvied out by grade:
Seniors.Your 12th Grader may be in the fortunate situation to have already heard good news from colleges. But unless she has been accepted Early Decision, there are still options on the table and applications to be completed. Even if all her applications are completed, your senior isn’t done yet! Encourage your student to apply for external scholarships, which you can research on FastWeb.com, Scholarships.com, ScholarshipExperts.com, or SchoolSoup.com. Even if the dollars amounts seem small, they add up.
Some scholarships sound hilarious, many require essays, others require nothing but filling out a form. Most seniors are too burnt out to bother with scholarships, but Woody Allen observed, “Half of life is just showing up,” so it is worth doing!
Mom and Dad, you’re not done yet either! It is time to become a financial aid maven. Read Pay for College without Sacrificing Your Retirement: A Guide to Your Financial Future by Tim Higgins and visit FinAid.org. Begin preparing a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) with help from FAFSA.ed.gov. Prepare a CSS Profile (College Scholarship Student Profile) with help from CollegeBoard.com, if applying to private colleges. Even if you don’t believe you will qualify for need-based aid, fill out a FAFSA anyway. You may at least land low interest loans or workstudy: it all adds up. Some school-specific scholarships require you to file a FAFSA.
Juniors.Encourage your 11th Grader to take the SAT I Reasoning Test (1/23/10) at CollegeBoard.com or the ACT with Writing (2/6/10) at ActStudent.org. Your student should try to take a study course over vacation. Kaplan and Princeton Review offer in-person classes, small group or one-on-one tutoring, online courses and study guides, ePrep offers video tutoring online, and Number2.com offers free prep. To determine whether SAT or ACT is better for your student, check Kaplan, Princeton Review and ePrep for SAT-ACT comparisons and diagnostic tests.
Your guidance counselor will kick off a junior college night in January, followed by students developing initial college lists. Help your teen prepare for the formulation of a college list by reading books from my post, “Reading List for 11th Grade Parents.” If you plan to work with tutors or a college consultant, this is a good time to ask around. Be sure your consultant is a member of IECA or NACAC.
Winter break is also a good time to explore and apply for summer programs. Junior year is the last summer experience before your adolescent applies to college. It is a perfect time for self-discovery, gaining hands-on experience in areas of interest, to go deeper with a passion or explore a road not taken to confirm/disconfirm interest in further pursuit of that activity. My post, “Ten Ways for Teens to Spend the Summer,” offers ideas, books and web resources.
Most important, clarify priorities with your 11th Grader. Ask your student to take a hard look at the balance between academics and extra-curricular activities, and if necessary, dial back activities to improve grades. Make no mistake, colleges care more about academic performancen in rigorous courses than activities. They are, after all, academic institutions! The upcoming semester is your student’s last chance to create an impressive full year GPA for the transcript, which will impact the class rank colleges will see next fall.
Sophomores. Just like families of juniors, 10th Graders should be exploring and applying to summer programs and solidifying priorities to balance academics and activities. Academic goals should not only focus on GPA, but on qualifying for more honors and AP classes for junior year.
Freshmen. Families of 9th Graders should pursue goals similar to 10th Graders. Freshman families should be disciplined about dialing back overwhelming sports or arts activities. Some students who were able to manage academics and activities in middle school may find something’s got to give in high school (especially if she has moved to a more rigorous school). Academics have to come first.
Middle School. Make sure your student is taking the prerequisites needed for honors classes in high school. This is a time for opening up options. Since many school systems don’t give late bloomers much of a chance, it is up to parents to ensure their kids are in the selective college prep “track” early in the game. Meet with your teen’s guidance counselor and make sure your student is on a trajectory that will maximize academic opportunities throughout high school.
Winter break is a time for rest and rejuvenation, and also a time for setting priorities and preparing for the demanding challenges ahead—at any age!
No matter what grade your teen is in, her college-bound journey will be an exciting, complicated, sometimes stressful yet ultimately rewarding adventure. My blog offers guidance (and lots of empathy!) for every chapter of the journey.
Check the “CATEGORIES” list on the lower righthand panel of my blog. Click on Grades 9, 10, 11, 12, College Admissions or College Life for posts relating specifically to your adolescent’s age/stage in the college process. There are also special topics, such as High School Graduation, College Move-In, Scholarships & Financial Aid, Empty Nest, and Parent-Student Relationships.
For high school students living in NJ, I offer one-on-one consulting for college admissions. For college students or grads living anywhere, I offer phone and email consultation for grad school applications or preparation for career and job search. (This is my once a year commercial.)
Or…just visit my blog. And please share your valuable comments with other parents of college-bound teens!
My last string of colored lights just made the top of the tree. Amazingly, they all worked. I opened the red plastic tub that held the treasures. The souvenirs from memorable travels or places we’ve lived. And most of all, the homemade ornaments from Christmases long, long ago…
My iTunes holiday music played through the stereo as I unwrapped each memory. Karen Carpenter’s rich, warm alto filled the air as I rediscovered a ceramic shopping bag ornament labelled Marshall Field’s & Christmas. Oh, that Christmas in Chicago, imprisoned by a blizzard in our State Street high rise. My husband and I were such happy hermits, before pets, children and chaos.
“Through the years we all will be together…” A lightbulb painted brown, with felt antlers, craft shop wiggly eyes and puffy red nose. My son had created it at age three, during a play date with the family of his best pal from preschool. My son, now 19, a sophomore at Emory University, a thousand miles away.
Suddenly I felt a wave of nostalgic sadness overtake me. Why? I’ve never been a sentimental empty nester and thought I had adjusted pretty well. Since my only son left for college a year and a half ago, I launched Position U 4 College, built a new kitchen, lost ten pounds, held a tiger cub, tried hang gliding in Rio, and snorkeled with manatees. Has the novelty of being an empty nester worn off? Have I completed my bucket list so soon? Could I be going through the “sophomore slump”?
Normally I don’t feel that way. In fact, I’ve hoped never to feel that way, resenting my own mother for acting as if her life was over when her kids left home. I’ve always been inspired by my husband’s parents, who continue to travel, socialize and enjoy life now in their mid 8o’s.
Maybe I am grieving a loss. Like the Necessary Losses of Judith Viorst’s classic book. It is the loss of a stage in my life, filled with joy, promise and anticipation, that will simply never be again. It’s not that my empty nest journey will have no excitement or meaning. It’s just that the chapter of parenting a young child is, well…over.
Wait a minute! My son’s growing up, becoming independent, finding a career, eventually a spouse. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Shouldn’t I simply be rejoicing that he’s succeeding at this stage of his life’s big adventure?
Of course. And I am. But a chapter of my life is over. And maybe it took a year to realize that it will never be the same again. The holidays, with jewelry commercials and old home movies, raise the expectation that we should all be gathered around the tree holding hands: “Here we are, as in olden days, happy golden days of yore…” But we’re not–nor should we be.
I smiled and hung up the little lightbulb reindeer. The wave had passed. I heard my son’s ringtone on my Blackberry, calling to catch up with Mom on his five minute walk from the fraternity house to final exams. No more Christmas Past. This is Christmas Present.
On Wed., Dec. 2, 7 PM EST, Wall Street Journal on Campus/Unigo webcast a panel discussion of admissions deans from 8 top colleges and universities called “Inside the Admissions Office” from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. The panel discussion was moderated by Unigo CEO/Founder Jordan Goldman.
Schools represented were Bryn Mawr, Grinnell, Marquette, University of Pennsylavnia, University of Vermont, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and Williams College. I gave my Position U 4 College clients a heads up about this great webcast. I’d like to pass it along to my readers as well, since the webcast seems to repeated on an ongoing basis. Check it out!
What to do if you’re deferred? What does deferral mean, anyway? It depends on the school. “Some, like Georgetown University, defer all or most [applicants they do not accept early], denying only those who clearly don’t meet the qualifications for admission…Other colleges prefer to make hard decisions sooner rather than later, denying many qualified candidates they know they would deny in the regular cycle anyway, and deferring just a small percentage who look competitive for the final round…If there is a trend, it is in the direction of denying more students in the early round rather than fewer.” (Springer, p. 215).
Michele Hernandez talks about the varying meanings of deferral in A is for Admission: The Insider’s Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges: “…You will not know if you were a polite defer (that is, a valedictorian with low test scores who will probably not be admitted anyway but was deferred to show that he was strong enough not to be rejected outright) or a realistic defer (that is, somebody who looked pretty strong but the college wanted to wait for more scores and/or midyear grades to see how the person performed while carrying a challenging senior year course load.” (Hernandez, p. 38).
Both Springer et al and Hernandez suggest the student call admissions to get a sense of how to improve his chances in the regular cycle, write a letter to reaffirm the school as his top choice, add at most one powerful letter of recommendation, and update the school about new awards. And finish out the fall term with strong grades! But both authors caution that the odds of a deferred applicant gaining regular admission are not high (Springer, p. 216, Hernandez, pp. 39-41).
Given the low odds of admission after being deferred, your 12th Grader should continue to apply to meet Regular Decision deadlines. As J.S. Mitchell advises in8 First Choices: An Expert’s Strategy for Getting Into College, all the schools on the list should be genuine, attractive choices, not halfhearted backups. If the deferral decision was a wake-up call that your teen shot too high, reassess. Meet with the guidance counselor and utilize quantitative tools (i.e., Naviance Family Connection) to reevaluate the realism of the college list. If necessary, add less competitive schools, but institutions your teen would be happy attending.
What to do if you’re denied?Most next steps are the same as for deferral. Of course, denial has a more painful sting. Springer et al point out: “The problem with an early application denial is that it usually occurs in isolation, and also at holiday time…students usually apply early to only one college, and those who receive denials have no simultaneous acceptances to ease the blow.” (Springer, p. 215)
While it is easier to “save face” with peers when a student is deferred, the finality of denial allows the student to move on. A deferral will most likely not end in eventual acceptance, but because it keeps hope alive it may result in a half-hearted, less effective application effort for the regular cycle. Denial is a blow, but (after blowing off steam) the student is ready to resume the college process. Hopefully, you have kept your student working on Regular Decision essays all along, so he will not be totally back at Square One.
This may be a difficult experience in your family. Some accepted students will not be gracious or supportive. Others who were deferred or denied may ignite a nasty, sour grapes attitude within the senior class. Keep your teen on the high ground. Eventually good news will come, but it is now a long four months away. Try to boost your teen’s self-esteem, with the reminder that this simply means that the admissions committee of this particular college decided not to admit him. This may mean his academic credentials were not quite strong enough for this institution, or that the admissions people surmised the match wasn’t there, or even random occurences over which he has no control.
Fast forward to the experience of college grads in this economy. In my consulting practice, I work with young adults who jobhunt for months, weathering disappointment, learning to be patient in between opportunities, keeping their spirits up until they land the job they want. Learning to postpone gratification is a key life skill. Early admission deferral or denial in Grade 12 may be the first time your child has faced this kind of challenge, but it won’t be the last. He might as well learn how to survive it with his self-esteem intact.
Ironically, Dec. 15 2009 is the 70th Anniversary of the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, where my son goes to college. Margaret Mitchell’s masterpiece is a timeless tribute to hardy human beings who persevere and survive in the face of disappointment, rejection, heartbreak and loss. Adversity is painful but strengthens one’s survival muscles. With your support, your young adult can learn to weather this disappointment with resolve, resilience and grace.
Early Action (“EA”): Accepted.What a happy relief! If the school is your student’s first choice, the college process could be over, unless your family needs to compare financial aid packages. If the school(s) offering Early Action acceptance are not your teen’s first choice, the application process will continue to meet Regular Decision (“RD”) deadlines. Either way, a decision and deposit are not required until May 1. But it certainly adds a cushion of comfort to know that your student has a college to attend next fall that is an appealing choice.
If financial aid is not an issue, and the school is truly your student’s first choice, should your family wait until the formal May 1 deposit deadline? It is courteous to send in your deposit and withdraw applications from other colleges, as soon as you know this is where you will attend. “If you know for sure where you will be going in September, share your good fortune by giving your fellow students (locally and nationally) a better chance for a regular decision at one of the colleges they would like to attend.” (Springer, p. 214).
As I suggested in my last post, counsel your teen to keep a low profile at school. Early action plans come in many flavors and notification time schedules (Restricted or Nonrestricted Early Action, Priority Application, Rolling Admission,Likely Letters). Some students may know, or have an indication, of where they are going as early as October. If your student knows before December, he doesn’t need to be coy or act like a secret agent, but urge him to be sensitive to the anxiety of his peers who don’t know anything yet.
Early Decision (“ED”): Accepted.Whew! Your student is done with the college process, the outcome is positive, and your family can celebrate and relax over the holidays. But wait, you’re not done yet. If financial aid is relevant to your child’s attendance, you will need to review the financial aid package.
“Unmet financial need is the only grounds for not attending a college that admits you under binding early decision. If your financial aid package provides less money than you will need to attend, contact the financial aid office immediately…respectfully request that your financial aid package be reviewed…The family..makes the final decision about whether the early decision financial aid package is sufficient to allow the student to attend.” (Springer, p. 214).
If aid is not an issue, your student is honor system bound to attend the school. A deposit is required in a few weeks. Your teen must contact every school to which he applied (Early Action), and immediately withdraw his application. “Some selective colleges using early decision share their acceptance lists as a way to police compliance with the binding policy. If your name were to show up on two early decision admit lists, you would be in trouble with both schools.” (Springer, p. 214).
Encourage your teen to keep a low profile. This is a tense time for high school seniors, many gripped by a contagious “all-or-nothing” feeling I described in my last post. Most students who are disappointed now end up pleased by April, but this week it may seem like the end of the world to those deferred or denied. Prepare your happy teen for unpleasant dynamics, ranging from other kids’ inability to cheer for peers to downright jealousy. Friendships can become strained, even broken off. Urge your teen to be gracious and supportive. Remember, discretion is the better part of valor. And please, no obnoxious college sweatshirts!
In my next post, I will discuss next steps if your student has been accepted under an Early Action (“EA”) plan. Meanwhile, hang in there!
Thanksgiving is over, and your high school senior returns to school for one of the most nerve-wracking periods of an already stressful year.
Your high school student may have chosen to apply Early Decision (“ED”), Early Action (“EA”), priority application or rolling admissions. Even if your teen chose Regular Decision, the atmosphere will be wired with contagious tension for all seniors during the next few weeks.
For early applicants, the white-knuckle, nail-biting suspense really sets in now. That wilderness of free-floating anxiety and acceptance stress between Thanksgiving and December 15. It is such an all-or-nothing feeling, as though your kid’s whole self-worth and future destiny rests on one online message. It starts: “Congratulations…” or perhaps something else. You won’t need to read the rest.
As a parent, keep it in perspective, and pass on your wisdom to your student. This is not an all-or-nothing verdict. “ED” was a college enrollment invention to guarantee yield, not for families’ benefit. It is a Faustian bargain that gives applicants an acceptance advantage and early relief in the tortuous college process, in exchange for losing financial aid package choices and a longer incubation time for college exploration. “EA” was created to help admissions people spread out their workload, sometimes with an acceptance advantage, depending on the school.
Be realistic during this time period, and prepare your student for the most likely outcome. Was this university in the realistic range, perhaps a slight reach, for which the early advantage will likely compensate? Or was this school a pipe dream, a “Hail Mary Pass”, to which your teen applied early to maximize advantage but still a long shot? You probably know the answer in your heart already.
If it’s a long shot, help your student put it on the back burner. Emphasize that it is only one of many options. Keep preparing application forms for Regular Decision schools for your guidance counselor. Keep your son or daughter working on essays for “RD” schools. If December’s decision is disappointing, your student will not be overwhelmed by consequential application work required over the holidays before January deadlines.
As J.S. Mitchell advises in8 First Choices: An Expert’s Strategy for Getting Into College, all the schools on your teen’s college list need to be genuine, appealing choices, not halfhearted backups. This will mitigate the all-or-nothing feeling about December news. Help your student to take the long view: even if there are short term disappointments, by April he or she will probably be quite pleased.
Advise your student to keep a low profile. If December news is disappointing, your teen may be uncomfortable keeping up a “game face” with peers, especially students receiving happy news. The opposite is also true. Friendships can become strained, at least temporarily. The best approach? Keep it on the “DL” : follow a “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy. The news will become clear soon enough. Follow this advice yourself with other parents. If you’re going crazy, remember to keep distracted by painting!
If your student chose not to apply early, what should you be doing now? Completing essays and applications. And “pushing the button” as soon as you can! Although “RD” applications are not due until January 1 or beyond, it doesn’t hurt to get applications and supporting documentation in early. The sooner an application is complete, the sooner it can be reviewed, by readers who are “fresh” at the start of the evaluation process, not overwhelmed and burnt out.
Your college freshman is finally home after fall semester. He seems happy to be home, but not eager to return to school for spring. Sometime between handing you an oversized duffle of filthy laundry, recovering from final exam sleep debt, gobbling up Mom comfort food as an alternative to pizza, lighting the Menorah or trimming the Christmas tree, your student casually announces: “I think I want to transfer.”
Dr. Allen Grove, professor and director of a program to help students transition to college, also writes the About.com Guide to College Admissions. In two excellent articles, he outlines: 5 Good Reasons to Transfer to a Different College and 5 Bad Reasons to Transfer.
Grove’s 5 reasons that justify transfer are: financial necessity, academic upgrade, specialized major (I would expand that to include sports or arts programs) , family obligations, or social situation (I would include overall atmosphere). 5 “bad” (misguided) reasons to change schools are: love, your school is too hard, you’re homesick, you hate your roommate, or you hate your professors. I’ll comment on the reasons that are not self-explanatory.
Social situation that justifies transfer would be a true mismatch between a student’s temperament and a school’s overall atmosphere. Obvious examples: a serious student feels overwhelmed by a toxic, 24/7 partying environment, or a teen who enjoys work/play balance feels too pressured in a fiercely competitive pre-professional school. 
Less obvious examples: a teen with a conservative upbringing is painfully disconnected on a far-left campus; a student of color feels no sense of community in a school lacking diversity; a person from a cosmopolitan area feels too isolated from entertainment venues on a remote rural campus; a kid who is wild about spectator sports feels unsatisfied in a school with no atheltics emphasis; a teen from a close-knit high school feels lost in a huge, annonymous public institution.
We are not talking about minor adjustments. A key college growth challenge is learning to adapt to new situations and appreciating people with different backgrounds and viewpoints. But most of us have been in environments at some point in life where we felt completely misplaced, like a fish out of water. That’s what I’m talking about. 
College is such a highlight of one’s life, where one finds lifelong friends, forms key dating relationships or chooses a spouse, and selects one’s young adult career. Not to mention it is a huge financial investment, perhaps $50 grand a year! Why spend four years in a place where you won’t thrive and may be absolutely miserable?
The most tricky, self-deceptive reason for transfer is being in love. Young people under 21 are still wrestling with the intensity of raging hormones, in conflict with the yet not fully mature frontal lobe that controls executive function and decision-making. This reality is described in lay terms in The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids by Barbara Strauch. 
Worse, an older adolescent’s identity is still in tremendous flux, when it comes to academic and career interests as well as key relationships (or even sexual identity). No wonder it’s tricky! Erik Eriksen asserted that the capstone developmental task of adolescence is forming an authentic identity, during which a young person may be vulnerable and confused until fully establishing his own individuality.
Navigating this morass effectively requires educating oneself in an environment that offers many alternatives to explore, for fields of study, career options, or friendship and dating opportunities. Limiting oneself too soon in any area is usually viewed (at least years later) as a mistake.![](http://positionu4college.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/decison2.jpg "\")
Am I saying that one should never make an educational or professional decision with a “significant other” in mind? No, but college is too early, because a student is still building the foundation of his personal, academic and career equity. And while rare, long distance relationships can work; I know several lifelong happily married couples who have proven it. 
An overall theme of these 5 good, 5 bad reasons to transfer is: only transfer for “big picture” reasons that can’t be changed by staying. If a student doesn’t get along with one roommate, get another. But if a student can’t stand the whole campus culture, or the family can’t afford the school, or they don’t have enough courses in one’s desired major, it makes sense to consider transfer. Stay tuned: in future posts we will discuss how to go about it.
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