Category — Supporting Your College Student

High school seniors have been doing their research on potential colleges, taking the appropriate high school classes, participating in plenty of extracurricular activities, making college visits, writing college essays, completing college applications, and finally awaiting the college verdict via acceptance or rejection letters.  Whew!

The college admissions process becomes a way of life for many high school juniors and seniors.  But amid the rush to get into just the right college, has your student taken time think about why she wants to go to college?

A college education is expensive.  No one would argue otherwise.  Depending on the college, the expense may feel manageable or overwhelming.  A college education for the right reasons is an investment in the future.  Heading to college for the wrong reasons may potentially be a monumental waste of money.

[Read more →]

Your college student has completed his first semester of college.  Congratulations!  Hopefully, it was a good semester, but there’s a chance it might not have been.  A rocky first semester is not unusual for many first year students.  But whether or not the semester was as successful as you and your student had hoped, having the first semester under your belt is a milestone on the college path.

As your student prepares for his second semester of college, this is a good time for you both to take stock, think about the past semester, and to create a plan for the fresh start that a new semester brings.

Returning to college for the second semester may loom large for some students.  Beginning college for the first semester is stressful, but exciting.  Everything is new, students look forward to their independence, opportunities to make new friends, and the new experiences that a new environment will bring.  Returning for the second semester may mean that your student needs to make some changes, break some habits, sharpen some skills, or get out of a possible rut.  This time, your student knows what’s ahead and knows some of the challenges he may face.

[Read more →]

As many college students pass the mid-point in their semester, they begin to realize that the final results of the term may not be good.  This is a point in the term when some students give up.  They may decide to withdraw from a class or drop out of college entirely; or they may simply drift through the rest of the term and wait for the inevitable dismissal.  Some students, however, wonder whether they can salvage something from the term to build on later.

If your student is struggling at this point, and is willing to share his situation with you, it will be important that you be able to help him value his mistakes and think about what to do – both immediately and more long term.

First, it will be important that your student decide whether or not he wants to salvage anything.  He may not, and that may prompt a different conversation.  But if he wants to try, you may need to help him think about whether it is possible and what to do. Many students in this situation feel that they have lost control of what is happening in their lives.  The following plan may help them begin to take control once again.

[Read more →]

There are many sources of challenges students face as they navigate their college careers, but sometimes the challenges may be of their own making.  Sometimes, students seem to undermine themselves by making assumptions or restricting their choices. These students may need help from someone to get out of their own way. As a college parent, you may be able to help your student move forward more successfully.

Most students eventually succeed in college in spite of bumps and potholes along the way.  For some students the transition may be more difficult than others, some students may struggle academically, some may have challenges socially, and others face personal difficulties.  For a lucky few, the transition goes smoothly, academics are workable and personal and social life come together.

[Read more →]

Being a college parent is hard work.  Sometimes it is difficult work because of the amount of things that you need to do and because you need to be very involved.  But sometimes, being a college parent is hard work because of what you need not to do.  Sometimes the hard work is standing back and allowing your student to take control of the experience.

But just because you need to stand back and let your student be in the driver’s seat, doesn’t mean that you, as a college parent, are not involved.  Although you may be on the sidelines of this experience, you can still be present, needed, and very much part of the fabric of the experience.  The involvement may, however, be more subtle (and therefore, in some ways more difficult) than you anticipated.

We’d like to suggest five important jobs for college parents.  You may not do all jobs equally well.  You may not need to tackle some jobs as much as others.  You may need to experiment and practice some skills before you become proficient at them.  But we’d like to suggest that you have five important tasks as a college parent.

[Read more →]

In our last post, we considered some characteristics and causes of college student stress.  In this post, we continue the examination of student stress by considering some things that parents might discuss with their student who is experiencing stress.

As parents, we want to help our students have the best college experience possible.  We want to protect them from harmful things and keep them healthy.  As college parents, some of the difficulty that we experience is knowing that we cannot always “make things better”.  In our role as coaches rather than caretakers, we are sometimes limited to offering suggestions to our students and then letting them take control of their lives.  This may be especially true when we sense that our student is experiencing a difficult time physically or emotionally.

As college parents, we must continue to trust the parental radar that may indicate when our student’s stress is more than the normal everyday stress of dealing with college life.  If you have an indication that your student is having extreme emotional difficulty, suggest immediately that your student speak to someone at school.  Most schools have counselors, psychologists, or other mental health professionals who are ready to help and experienced in college student issues.  If you fear for your student’s well being, contact someone at school.  They may not be able to share information with you, but they can check on your student’s well being.

[Read more →]

There’s a quote that’s attributed to Yogi Berra that says, “You’ve got to be careful because if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else.” In true Yogi Berra fashion, his seemingly simplistic quote may contain some important wisdom. 

For college students, setting goals and working toward them may be a particularly difficult task.  Some students may be very career oriented and know exactly what they want in life, while others are undecided about their major and have not yet found their direction.  Yet even those students with clear long-term goals may have difficulty defining the shorter term goals that motivate them on a daily basis.  Even more perplexing for many students is the task of separating goals from the action plans needed to reach those goals.

Both long-term and short-term goals are important for college students.  Having clear goals will help your college student stay motivated, prioritize time and energy, manage his time, see the bigger picture of his college experience, focus on important things, and take pride and ownership in his experiences.  Establishing good, clear goals, however, is a difficult task.  It requires clarity of thinking and often a great deal of self-reflection.  You may need to help your college student think about and identify his goals.  Here are a few things to help your student think about as he considers some goals for his college experience – or perhaps just his next semester.

[Read more →]

Last year at this time we offered some New Year’s resolutions for college and high school parents and for their students.  We still think they are good resolutions, worth considering carefully if you are a college or high school parent.  Please take a few minutes to follow the links below and reread our suggestions.

New Year’s Resolutions for College Parents – and Their College Students

New Year’s Resolutions for High School Parents – and Their College Bound Students

In addition to the specific resolutions offered last year, this year we’d like to offer some suggestions to keep in mind as you and your student think about creating your own resolutions for the fresh start that the second semester of the year offers.  Give some thought to these characteristics of good resolutions as you consider what matters to you in the New Year.

[Read more →]

There are good days and bad days for everyone, of course.  College students are no different.  We hope that our college students will have more good days than bad days.  But sometimes, your college student may hit a string of bad days, or may seem particularly unhappy with his college experience.  This is one of those times when, as college parents, we may feel most helpless.  And the reality is that, in some ways, we are.  Your student may need to work through the situation himself.  But you can be there, providing that all-important constant support, and perhaps also provide a bit of guidance.

Once you’ve determined that your student’s unhappiness is just that, and not something more serious that needs intervention or counseling, you can begin to help your student examine and think about the sources of her unhappiness with her college experience.  As a starter, it may help if your student understands that it is very normal to feel a low point a few weeks into the semester.  The novelty of a new semester is over, the reality of midterms, papers, and expectations hits. The glow of new friendships may also be wearing off.   It feels as though things might be better almost anywhere else.

[Read more →]

Students work very hard to get into college.  Students (and their parents) spend years, and countless hours, making just the right list of potential colleges, visiting school after school, studying for SAT or ACT exams, writing college essays, filling out applications, interviewing, and waiting for that all important letter.  Students agonize over the decision to find the place where they feel comfortable, attend Orientations, contact roommates, shop and fill their dorm rooms with all of the necessities.  Why then, do almost 45% of those students who began with so much hope and so many plans, leave college or transfer schools before they complete their degree?

There are hundreds of reasons why students leave the school where they began their college education.  Some students transfer to another school (often losing credits along the way), some dropout entirely, some stopout and return later, and some slowdown and take longer to finish their degree – often as a part-time student.  Because, as parents, we are often used to being responsible for the direction our student takes, we may feel responsible when our student tells us that he wants to leave school.

It is important that college parents understand that there are some factors leading to college success that we can control and help with, and there are factors over which no one has control, or the student alone has control.  It is important to separate the two categories.  In this post, we’d like to take a look at some of the factors that parents can control (a very short list), and some of the major factors that parents cannot control (a much longer list).  We hope that this will help parents understand how varied the reasons for leaving school may be, and also help parents discuss reasons with their college student and help support the college student who may be struggling to succeed.

[Read more →]