Book Review: Launching: Parenting to College & Beyond

From time to time, we like to review some of the books available for parents of college students.  There is a wealth of literature available to help parents cope with the transition to college and the changes that occur throughout the college years.  We’ve created lists of recommended reading, and there is something for everyone. Check out our Resources and Tools page for suggestions.

Launching: Parenting Your Child to College and Beyond is a brief, 50+ page handbook that should prove helpful for parents of teens and for those about to send a student off to college.  The book is divided into two sections.  The first section deals with the transition into adulthood and should be helpful to parents as they try to understand their child.  The second section of the book deals with the parents’ transition to a new role as they deal with their changing child.

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When Should My College Student Choose a Major?

The short answer to when your college student should choose a major is when they are ready.  However, as we all realize, it may not be as simple as that.  Some students may be ready to choose a major early in their college career, or even well before they get to college.  Other students may have great difficulty settling on a single major.  And still other students may be ready to choose a major, but may not realize it.

Perhaps one of the first and most important conversations you should have with your college student about choosing a major is that choosing a major is not the same thing as choosing a career.  Many students are reluctant, or even fearful, of choosing a major because they worry that this choice will lock them into a career.  Students think career first, and then major.  You may need to help your student understand that a specific major may lead to many careers, and that several majors may lead to the same career.  Students should also be reminded that most people today may change careers several times during their working life, and may finally settle on a career quite far removed from their college major. If your student does not yet have a specific career path in mind, that should not inhibit them from choosing a field of study in which they are interested.  The more your student studies and learns about their area, the more career direction they will have.

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Using Senior Year to Prepare Your Student for College Success

As college parents, or potential college parents, we want our students to have a successful college career.  We hope that our student’s transition to college will go smoothly, that they will excel academically, make friends, be happy socially, and ultimately graduate to find a fulfilling career.  During the senior year of high school we may already be visualizing that next commencement ceremony.  Having the dream and the vision for our student is important — it may be what keeps us going through all of those tuition payments.  But is there anything that you can do, while your student is still in high school, and beyond the admissions process,  to help move them toward the success that you hope for?

There is a lot of material available to students about preparing for college.  There are countless books, websites, programs, lectures, and consulting services offered to help students as they move toward college.  Many of these services help students decide what high school classes to take, how to prepare for the SAT or ACT, how to select colleges and conduct college visits, how to finance an education and acquire loans.  There are lists and lists available of what to bring to college and how to furnish the ultimate dorm room.  However, there are some less tangible, less obvious ways in which parents can help their students be prepared for all that college entails.

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Will Your College Student Graduate On Time?

The question of whether your college student will graduate on time is a loaded question.  It’s an important question, and it’s a tricky question.  As parents, we send our students off to college hoping that all will go without a hitch and that they will graduate in the expected four years.  We often do our careful financial planning based on the four-year timetable.  As we examine the question of graduating on time, there are two important things that we need to consider before we discuss time to graduation.

  • The first thing that we need to consider is what we mean by ”on time”. Although most of us still consider four years to be the norm for an undergraduate degree, according to the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), the percentage of students who graduate in four years is approximately 36%.  The percentage who finish in six years is 57.5%.  This is approximately 10% less than the figure for the 1960’s.  Colleges have historically measured graduation rates which include those who graduate in 150% of the normal time — 6 years for a ”4-year degree.”  With the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 2008, colleges now measure graduation rates with 200% of time — 8 years for a ”4-year degree.”  So we may need to question whether a ”4-year degree” is the norm.

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What Might Jeopardize My College Student’s Financial Aid?

College is expensive, there’s no argument there.  Many families rely on financial aid to make college a possibility.  For most families, that financial aid package contains a combination of scholarships, grants, loans, and possible work-study for their student.  So you’ve received your financial aid package (which never seems enough, but it helps) and your student has headed off to college.  You’re all set.  Or are you?

Although there is no guarantee that the amount of financial aid that your student is offered for freshman year will be maintained for all four years, most colleges do honor and continue their offering unless family circumstances change.  Most families can count on that level of aid continuing for their student’s four years at college.  If your student needs more than four years to complete his degree, you should check with the school about their policies regarding fifth year financial aid.

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Talking to Your College Student About Stress

In our last article, we considered some characteristics and causes of college student stress.  In this article, 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.  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 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.

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Is Your College Student Stressed? Probably.

This is the first of two posts dealing with college students and stress.  In this post we will consider the types of college student stress and some possible causes.  In our next post, we offer parents some suggestions to help their student deal with the stress they may encounter.

College students experience a lot of stress.  As parents, some of us are acutely aware of our student’s stress levels, and to others of us it may be less obvious.  Of course, not every student experiences stress, and some students actually thrive on a certain amount of stress; but many college students find that increased pressure or anxiety are part of the experience of college.  If you are not sure how your student feels about his stress level, or whether or not he feels that he is experiencing stress, consider some of the following information gathered about student stress.  You may want to discuss some of these findings with your student to help him realize that he, and/or his friends, may not be alone.

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Reading List: When Your College Student Graduates

Congratulations!  Your college student is about to graduate, or perhaps has graduated from college.  He is ready to take on the world!  But, as we all know, that doesn’t mean that your job is done.  You’ve done your work as a college parent, but now a different, and in some ways even more delicate form of parenting begins.  Your student may have a job and be out on his own.  He may have moved on to graduate school.  He may be returning to your nest for a while.  Current research and theory suggest that students who graduate from college are part of that group now being identified as ”emerging adults” — certainly not children or adolescents, but yet not quite adults yet.  As a parent of an emerging adult, you now have a new role.

This post includes a list of nine books which may be of interest to parents of college graduates.  The list is not exhaustive, there are certainly even more resources available, but this list should give parents a good start on material to support them through this interesting time.  All of the books have different styles and approaches, so it is important to find the books which resonate for you.

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Encouraging Your Student to Exercise in College

Parents are the encouragers.  We encourage our college students to study, to make friends, to get involved in activities at school, to get to know their professors.  Consider adding to your list encouraging your college student to get enough exercise.  According to a study done by researchers at Ohio State, as many as 52% of college students do not exercise.  The study also found that students differ in their response to social support for exercise, with women responding most to support of family and men responding more to support from friends.  However, whether your student is a male or female, consider asking about how much exercise he or she may be getting.

There are many reasons why students may not get enough exercise in college.  Although it is possible that students are spending too much time studying to fit exercise into their schedule, it is more likely a combination of many activities that crowd their schedule.  Students are spending time studying, working on or off campus, socializing with friends, and participating in campus activities.  They may have erratic schedules.  They may be overreacting to their dislike of high school gym class and viewing formal exercise as being back in the high school gym.  For some students, it is possible that friends provide a disincentive by viewing exercise as unimportant or ”uncool”.  Many students who were active in high school — either participating in sports or walking to and from school and/or jobs, may not realize how much less exercise they are getting now.

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Helping Your College Student Jump Start the Second Semester

One of the advantages of the college yearly cycle at most schools is that there are two opportunities each year for a new beginning.  September (or late August) and January mark the beginnings of new terms or semesters.  Each new semester is an opportunity to reinvigorate students and an opportunity to make some changes or start with a clean slate.

Previously, we offered some suggestions for ways in which your college student might approach this fresh start.  We encourage you to read the article, 9 Ways to Help Your College Student Get a Fresh Start for Second Semester and to share some of the thoughts with your student.  In addition, we’d like to offer here some suggestions of things that your college student can do immediately at the beginning of the new semester to get a head start and to make the most of this new beginning.

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