(Warning: this article contains a 3 letter "swear" word that starts with an A and ends with the sound a snake makes, if you are easily offended, please do not read further. That said, the word is in a quote, and I wanted the article to be as authentic as possible)
This school year’s inaugural Dr. Fisher article is brought to you once again, from the dining room table. In fact, if we hadn’t had dinner together tonight, this article would never have happened. I can’t stress the importance of family meals together enough; having the family connect once a day without devices gives us the opportunity to talk about current events, check in with our kids' lives, and discuss some of the topics that mean a lot to us as parents. Tonight, we were discussing the delicate balancing act between our Senior working, playing a fall sport, trying to get good grades, hang out with friends, and on top of all that, apply for college.
Last year we had the pleasure (please read that as immense sarcasm) of navigating the fall college admissions gauntlet with our oldest child. We survived, barely, and now have the privilege (even more sarcasm than last time) of doing the whole process again. We learned a lot about the process, and quite frankly, I am thrilled I only have two kids and this will be the last time going through it. It is stressful and the time flies by, with deadlines looming, but there are ways to make it less miserable and intimidating. I know this is important, because over the last several weeks in the office I have had multiple patients coming into the office with panic attacks and anxiety due to Senior year and the pressures involved with the application process. I am going to share with you some of the advice I give them, backed up with a little real-world experience.
First, and I cannot stress this enough, put together a calendar of your short-term goals for the application process. If you tell a kid they have to have a personal statement, 3 letters of recommendations, 6 essays, financial aid paperwork, and the application itself all turned in in 3 months, they will do one of 2 things, procrastinate and pretend it isn’t happening, or be so anxious they can barely function. Both of those outcomes will not facilitate a successful application. On the flip side, if you sit down with your child and decide that a rough draft of the personal statement will be due by Labor Day, letters of recommendation requests will be done by Sept 10th, and essays will be done by Sept 30, etc you have chunked the process into what will seem doable. When you make this calendar, make sure to write it down and review it weekly to see how you are doing! At dinner I started rolling out the, “Max, you are going to need to set up a calendar with short term goals” speech. He protested, and during that exchange, our soon to be Purdue freshman said, “Max, I know it seems like they are..” Right then my wife said something, and I said, wait, let him finish (because I knew what was coming), and my oldest continued “being annoying, but that saved my ass!” There it was, one of the first signs that your kid is no longer in high school, they actually appreciate what you did for them, but that is a topic for another day.
Second, put on blinders to all the other families around you. I am not saying ignore advice from well-meaning friends, but don’t sit around letting them shame you for not doing the same things they did. Hearing about how Susy had an ACT tutor, and how Johnny’s rich parents hired John Grisham to edit his personal statement will not help your anxiety level, and it definitely will not help your kid’s stress level. Personally, I am very turned off by the “getting into college industry” and the tactics they use to make you feel like you can’t succeed without their help (which involves handing over a lot of money). The reality is the application and test scores are a reflection of 12 years of hard work, and the result is already achieved, now it is just time to put it down on paper. This realization is helpful to kids who have worked hard through high school. Letting them know, they already did the hard work, and they are now what they will be as college applicants. This process is just about introducing themselves to the schools, staying organized, checking their emails, and jumping through hoops. I advised my wife to not talk to her friends about the process, because it very much devolves into a “keeping up with the Jones” scenario, instead, focus on your own family - blinders up.
Third, your kid should be applying to college, not you. Your goal is the same as the bumpers at a bowling alley - you are stopping the ball from going into the gutter, but your kid is in charge of either getting a strike or leaving a 7-10 split. We helped our Senior brainstorm on a topic for his statement, but we didn’t choose it. We called him out when he used AI to craft some of his paragraphs (they think we are so naive). Definitely talk to your student about this issue, if I can tell when a robot is talking to me, college admissions officers definitely can. I read his essays to point at sections where he didn't make a strong argument, but I didn’t make those arguments for him. In the end, he was a much better writer, and his last few essays were way better than when he started the process, and they were written by him.
Another tip I would give you is to make sure your kid understands how email works. This may seem odd, since they are on devices all day, but they ignore email. The only problem is the adult world focuses on it, and the college process involves checking email daily. Make sure they get in this habit, or important time sensitive material will be missed.
Lastly, remind them that there is an element of randomness and arbitrary decisions in the process. I have had several kids in the office stunned that they didn’t get into school A, the school of their dreams, but did get into school B, which was technically harder to get into - at least on paper. You have no way of knowing the secret formulas the colleges use and your child has no way of knowing if the person reviewing his application was bullied in seventh grade by a kid named Henry and has a subconscious bias against all Henrys of the world. This should be pointed out to them. That is also why you want to make sure you apply to a few schools that are “easy” to get in, your target school, and your dream school, because you have no idea how the dice will roll.
To help my kids understand the process, one night before my oldest started his application process last fall, I brought up a binder I have of “bong” letters. Rejection letters that I keep for motivation. It was eye opening to them. Even though I graduated with honors from Northwestern, I was rejected at 5 out of 6 medical schools I applied to. I will never know why, but that drove me harder, and I ended up first in my class at medical school. My point wasn’t to brag to our two sons, but to point out that the decisions of these admissions teams are out of our control; the only thing we can control is what we do with the opportunities we are given. Regardless if they get into the school of their dreams, or a school that they “settled” for, what matters is what they do there and that is what they need to focus on.
Until next time good luck with admissions (and parenting),
Dr. William J Fisher, MD
Fisher Pediatrics
317 861 7125
Comments