I wanted to share with you an article I wrote recently for the Old Mountain View Neighborhood Association. It's tailored to the Mountain View community but it contains many points relevant to anyone trying to understand the impact of the college application process on their children. Here's the article reprinted from the newsletter: |
The college application process has taken on the all the trappings of a “season”. There are countless websites, specialists, tests to take, visits to make, impressions to create. Our teens are supposed to take a crazy academic load, build homes in a third world country, write software applications, play varsity sports and instruments. In short, they are expected to do everything in order to “package” themselves; competing with their peers on an impossible level and get into the top U.S. News & World Report schools or their lives will be ruined before they’ve even started!
Mountain View high school students and families live in an area where this phenomenon is extreme. There are more AP classes offered, more clubs, higher GPAs and test scores and longer lists of extracurriculars than in many other parts of California and the U.S. So, our kids are under even more pressure than the “average” teen. A 2016 study published by Wallet Hub lists the San Francisco Bay Area among the most educated areas in the U.S. which means Mountain View students are surrounded by high-achieving parents as well as high-achieving peers.
Parents might remember the days of picking a school from the giant Fiske book or going by what friends or parents thought was a good school. We typed our applications and maybe wrote an essay. College counseling didn’t exist and we mailed our applications via the USPS.
Not so today.
High school students today are dealing with weighted versus unweighted GPAs, crazy test scores and now apply on the average of 6-8 schools. But in our area, they apply to 15 or more! To top it off, over 1.2 million international students attended college in the U.S. in 2016. So, our kids are dealing with a very competitive, global pool of applicants.
So, how can we help our teens deal with this overwhelming process?
Let them follow their hearts and don’t force them to apply to places that are not fits or are out of the realm of possibility. You want them to reach for the stars, but you also want them to go a college they like that really wants them. Students should only apply to schools where they can envision going!
Let them look beyond the STEM majors. We in Mountain View are very aware of the need for well-educated engineers, scientists, researchers and doctors. But we also need people who solve other problems; people who educate children, people who will take care of our planet, of our elders, of our finite resources. We need people who build and create.
Let them take breaks from talking about colleges for a few days a week. Let them go to people they trust to help with their essays and applications.
Make sure they sleep!
Let them lead the way with you cheering alongside, or right behind them and they will end up where they should be.
