Supporting Your Student

A New Year Means . . . New Resolutions, Of Course: Nine Activities for You and Your College Student

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It’s that time of year.  Reflections and looking back at the year that is ending, and Hopeful Beginnings as we look ahead and plan for the year to come.  Sometimes resolutions seem silly — we probably won’t keep them anyway.  But making a few New Year’s resolutions means thinking about the year to come — and what we’d like it (or us) to be like.

So as we begin 2016, we’d like to offer some suggestions for your college parenting year.  Take a few minutes to read our suggestions from previous years at the end of this post as well.  Our hope is to give you lots to think about — and then you choose what makes sense to you, or even better, make up your own.

This year, we’d like to suggest nine activities to undertake with your college student (or soon-to-be college student.)  We do a lot of talking here at College Parent Central about communicating with your student. But communicating can sometimes more easily occur while you are doing something together.  And doing something together often brings surprising discoveries (not to mention lots of fun) as you work or play together.

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14 Ways to Make Winter Break a “Get Ahead” Time for Your College Student

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Winter Break is almost here. You had a taste of having your student home from college over Thanksgiving Break, but that was just an appetizer.  The full course is coming over Winter Break, which might be as long as a month or more. Hopefully, everything went well over Thanksgiving Break, but there may have been some adjustments and compromises along the way.

Thinking ahead to Winter Break, and doing some planning, means you and your student can work together to make it not only a pleasant, but a productive break as well.  Here are fourteen suggestions for ways that your student can use at least a portion of Winter Break to do more than just catch up on sleep and friends (but be sure to leave plenty of time for that as well).  Of course, they can’t do everything on this list, but help your student decide what will give them the most benefit.

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Colleges Recognize Parents As An Important Part of Student Success

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Students head to college, not their parents; and students are, obviously, the main focus of the colleges they attend.  But even when your student goes to college, you are still part of the total picture of your student’s experiences, and colleges are recognizing your importance more and more.  In spite of all of the negative press about ”helicopter parents” or ”snowplow parents,” your appropriate involvement is important.

As an indication of the importance of parents to the college experience, many schools now have a staff member, or perhaps an entire office, dedicated to working with parents.  Recently, college personnel who work with parents and families at their institutions met in Savannah, GA to compare notes and share ideas at the fourth annual conference of AHEPPP — the Association of Higher Education Parent Program Professionals.  More than 160 colleges and universities are represented in the organization.  Parents, you matter to your students’ institutions!

If you haven’t discovered the Parent Office at your student’s institution, you might want to investigate whether there is one.  This office may communicate regularly with parents, or may be responsible for running events such as Orientation or Parents/Family Weekend.   According to a survey conducted biennially by the University of Minnesota since 2003, 23% of those responding to the survey this year said their office had been newly established in the past five years.

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The Good, the Bad, (and Sometimes the Ugly) of the First Year College Experience

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Much happens for students as they attempt to make the transition from high school to college.  It is often a tumultuous time.  Some students make this transition relatively smoothly, while others struggle throughout their first year of college.  Results of a study of first year students were released in early October and may help parents better understand the nature of the transition and first year students’ experiences.

Recently, Harris Poll conducted an online survey of 1,502 U.S. college students to better understand their experiences during their first year at college.  Very simply, the poll was an attempt to examine the challenges and triumphs that students face during their first year.  The study was commissioned by the JED Foundation, Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, and The Jordan Porco Foundation, and was administered last spring to high school graduates between the ages of 17-20, currently attending their second semester of college.

Essentially, this study attempted to address several areas:

  • Determine students’ levels of preparedness for college
  • Identify student challenges during transition
  • Pinpoint students’ main sources of support
  • Uncover the skills, education and information that students need for easier adjustment

Parents of current or future college students can consider some of the findings of this poll in order to think about important conversations with their student.  Some issues might be addressed with local schools as well.  How can we help our students currently enrolled in college, and how can we better prepare future college students?  What role do colleges, high schools and parents play in addressing some of the issues first year students face?

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Get to Know Your Student’s College Town

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Your student has headed to college.  Before they made their choice of college you both spent lots of time getting to know all about the college.  Your student made their choice and has headed off to a new adventure.  It may be a few miles away, or may be a long way from home.

But whether your student’s college is close to home or half way across the country, the school is located in a town or city.  And that town or city has become your student’s new home.  Hopefully, as your student spends time at their new home-away-from-home, they’ll get to know the surroundings.  The college experience is all about expanding horizons, and getting beyond the bounds of the college campus is part of that experience.

Why does the college town matter to parents?

You’re not going to live in your student’s college town, your student is.  So why should you have any interest in getting to know it?  Largely for two reasons: you can help your student discover some new things — or let them show you what they’ve discovered, and — it can be fun!

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Helicopter Parents Are Still Flying High

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It’s not a new story.  But perhaps the story is that it is still a story.  We wrote our first post about the phenomenon of helicopter parenting on College Parent Central back in 2009 and it wasn’t a new concept then.  A lot of attention has been given to this parenting style over the past few years, but it appears that not much has changed.  However, with the release of a new book by Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Freshman Dean at Stanford, the issue of helicopter parenting — and its consequences — has gained visibility and has become news once again.  (Watch for our review of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success in a few weeks.)

Helicopter parents are such a staple these days that the term was admitted to the Merriam Webster dictionary in 2011.  This dictionary defines the term as ”a parent who is overly involved in the life of his/her child.”  It includes parents who are overprotective or show excessive interest in their child’s life, those who micromanage their children, who intervene in conflicts, solve children’s problems, and make important decisions for their child.  It often begins early and continues well through college — and beyond.

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Your College Senior: Preparing to Finish College

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There’s a lot of focus on the transition for students from high school to college.  We know that students heading off to college face a whole new world.  But sometimes we underplay — or completely forget — that as students prepare to graduate from college, they are also entering a time of tremendous transition — and the whole new world of employment or graduate school.

As parents, we’ve worked throughout our student’s college career to loosen our grip, at least a little, and to recognize and celebrate our child’s growing independence and responsibility.  We know that the college senior year transition is our student’s transition to handle.  Hopefully, they will keep us informed of their progress along the way, but our role is (or at least should be) much less.  However, it helps to know what’s ahead and to be prepared.  Perhaps we can still do at least a little bit of nudging in the right direction.

We’ve collected a list of our posts that should be most helpful to parents of rising seniors.  Take a little time to read some of them and think about how you might help your student make the most of this final year — and prepare for the transition ahead.

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Why Can’t My Student Find Out His Place on the Admissions Waitlist?

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Your student has been waitlisted for admission to his first choice college.  He has officially entered the limbo in which more and more students (perhaps as high as 10% of applicants) find themselves.  He’s not in — but he hasn’t exactly been rejected either.  It is rather like trying to fly standby — you don’t have a seat on the plane, but there is a chance that you might get one.

What exactly is a waitlist?

The waitlist is a list of students who are qualified for acceptance to the college, but for whom the college does not have a current place.  Some students may actually be overqualified, and the school is waiting to see whether they are accepted and choose to attend a more selective school.  The college doesn’t want to waste a spot in their accepted student pool on someone they assume will probably attend another college.  Other students may be slightly underqualified and are given a ”courtesy” place on the waitlist as a softer form of rejection.  This may be especially true of students who are related to alumni or wealthy donors.

But most students on the waitlist are fully qualified to attend the school.  The waitlist becomes a safety net for the college if their ”yield” (number of accepted students who make a deposit) is low.  As students apply to more and more colleges, the yield may become more unpredictable.

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How Is My Student Doing? Sharing Your College Student’s Passwords

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When your student heads off to college, you worry.  Some parents worry a lot, often for good reasons.  But all parents, even those confident of their student’s abilities and responsibility, worry at least a little.  We worry about their safety, we worry about their happiness, and we worry about their success.  It is part of the nature of being a parent

We worried when our student was in high school, too, but most of us had our student under our roof.  We knew at least some of what was going on in their life.  In addition, many high schools now have portals or websites where administrators and teachers post announcements, reminders of deadlines, homework assignments, and grades.  As parents, we had access to such sites.  We felt included. We were on top of things.  We were in the loop.

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Deferred? Waitlisted? Help Your Student Take Action

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The college admissions process is a roller coaster for everyone.  Students spend months, or years, preparing — taking the right classes, taking tests, visiting schools, filling out applications, writing essays, securing recommendations.  It’s exhausting and everyone is anxious for the process to conclude.

Many students send their applications for Early Action or Early Decision and hope to have an answer by December.  Other students apply through rolling admission or regular admission and hope to know their fate by early spring.

But two specific situations can thrust your student into limbo.  If your student has applied to school through Early Action or Early Decision and is deferred, she will need to wait to have her application reviewed with the regular pool of applicants in the spring.  If your student applies for regular admission and is wait listed, she will need to wait, sometimes well into the summer, to hear whether there will be a place for her — and this will depend on the response rate from those who have been offered a place through regular admission.

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