There’s plenty of advice available to parents about when to have The Talk with their children. (If you’re a parent reading this, you undoubtedly know which one I’m referring to, and if you’re a child reading this and you don’t, well, ask your mother.) But as your son or daughter gets ready to make the transition from high school to college, there is another talk you should have with them that goes beyond your expectations for him and her while they’re away. Arming your child with the basics about college life is important, and will help him or her with this large life change. Let’s look at some of the things you might want to discuss before you unload their […]

Tell me about yourself. When you’re filling out college applications, schools pepper you with different permutations of this question. Can you briefly recount your most meaningful experience? Who or what matters most to you? How do you handle adversity? Why does diversity matter in your life? Is it any surprise that a new study shows, “First-year students indicating that they frequently felt “overwhelmed by all I had to do” during their senior year of high school increased from 28.5% in 2011 to 30.4% in 2012.” While colleges have plenty questions, far less frequently, if at all, do they ask what you expect them to deliver. If they did ask, would you be in a position to answer? Maybe not until […]

Colleges want you to succeed academically and socially, and they know that those two areas of life are not mutually exclusive. In order to help you deal with the overwhelmingness of meeting new friends while exploring campus, finding classes, learning to live on your own, and managing your schedule, most colleges host first year experience programs. These programs are designed to help you meet people while you transition to a new environment. Since these experiences will determine your initial impression of college life, you should get a feel for what a college offers in terms of a first year transition program. It’s always better to ask admissions representatives what their colleges do to help students acclimate to campus life. If […]

If I had to describe my first year of college in one word, it would have to be “freedom.” At this point, you’re probably groaning since everyone is always telling you about how much freedom you have in college and how great it is, but hear me out. Before I graduated, my parents gave me free reign and I was allowed to do pretty much whatever I wanted, so I didn’t think college would be that big of an adjustment; I was wrong. First, you have to realize that you’re living at your school 24/7. This may sound blatantly obvious and somewhat redundant, but there are a few things this fact entails that should definitely be addressed. For example, you’ll […]

As we enter the final days before the May 1 enrollment deadline, I imagine that many families are anxious to put their deposits anywhere. For most American families, college is their biggest expense after a home, and, if you listen to the news, a college degree may not guarantee a job that it once did. Students can still find jobs, as this report demonstrates. The difference is that those jobs exist in sectors unfamiliar even two generations ago. Most of those sectors, such as technology or biomedical sciences, require highly educated employees who can do more than just complete a task. These students can think like innovators. Thinking like an innovator, as we train our students to do, does not require […]