Calming Parental Fears: How to Approach the College Selection Process

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Calming Parental Fears: How to Approach the College Selection Process

Choosing a college is a momentous decision: one that will have an enormous impact on where you’ll be and what you’ll do for the next four years of your life. It feels like it should be entirely personal, like the only one really impacted by your decision is you.

Of course, if your parents are helping you pay for school, they (quite accurately) feel like they have a considerable stake in the decision as well.

Here are some strategies for managing the college search profess in a way that will make everything far smoother, less conflict-prone, and more comfortable for everyone involved. 

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Home for the Holidays?

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Home for the Holidays?

Winter break. You’ve been dying to get here for weeks (if not months), and have focused your whole energy on just getting over the finals finish line and getting back home where you can sleep all morning (into the afternoon?) and not read a single bit of assigned text for days and days on end. You have arrived: break is here and it is good.

At least, mostly good. 

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Thanksgiving far from home

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Thanksgiving far from home

When I came home for Thanksgiving my freshman year of college, it was the first time I really experienced going back home after being away. I had previously gone on family vacations, or a couple of week-long adventures of other kinds and then come home. But moving to college is moving away, and the experience of returning was a very strange one for me.

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Location

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Location

I chose my school through an intricate combination of whimsy and research. I did the campus visits, I wrote to a couple of professors, and I read through reams information. But the biggest factor in the selection process was that I went with my gut. I can’t explain why exactly. But here’s a huge piece of my decision that drove my father absolutely nuts:

I refused to go to the Midwest.

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