Finding the Right Fit College

Maybe you are like me and thought the fears, comparison, and second-guessing in parenting would end once your child entered the high school years. Instead, you most likely discovered an undercurrent of panic among many of your peers over the college application process. Maybe you feel it inside of yourself! The worry relates to standardized test scores, GPA, activity involvement, community service, honors, and the ability to write stellar essays, among dozens of other subcategories. Fears play out in various solutions, but one strategy some parents utilize to try to ensure success in college admissions is hiring a professional college admission coach. In our community, some of these coaches charge more than $10,000 to be a student’s coach throughout high school all the way through the college admission process. Doubtless, many of these individuals offer helpful services and peace of mind, and I am not mocking the profession. However, the whole process tends to be blown way out of proportion leading to needless panic beginning too early in high school. In my opinion, this anxious undercurrent steals the joy and excitement a family can find by being present in the moment when you have a high school student. The focus on becoming a “perfect college admissions candidate” heading to a prestigious college, taints a student’s ability to embrace living as a person with authentic interests and experiences. If students only have a box-checking mindset, where is the creative space to write an emerging story and pivot with unexpected opportunity?


My purpose in writing this is to offer parents a perspective shift. Only about 6% of students who apply to college gain admission to a “highest prestige” university, such as schools in the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, and Duke. Admission to those institutions (which always means meeting the highest standard academically), also usually means the applicant has a rare standout skill, represents a member of a population subset the university is trying to grow, or comes with the hope/promise of large monetary donations. Let’s be honest, those criteria are narrow. And that leaves 94% of college applicants somewhere else. These statistics do not even include the high school grads who aren’t sure they want to “go to college.”

Here is the truth: there is something for everyone to do after high school ends. Each young adult will go on to work, volunteer, serve, travel, take a gap year, start a family, or continue the schooling journey (often a combination of several of these!). Common sense tells us that not every person is a natural fit for traditional academic life. This is a good thing! There are many lucrative non-degree career paths that require specialized training instead of reading, writing, and research. There are also trade schools and community colleges, which are often less competitive and expensive, and have excellent teaching.

But for the 94% of college applicants who want to go straight into more schooling with an eye on a bachelor’s degree but won’t end up at Harvard: a place is waiting for them. There is a GREAT FIT college or university for each and every person who wants to go this route. There were 3,982 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the U.S. as of the 2019-2020 school year. Every one of the 50 states has at least one public university, and there are about 2,500 private institutions of higher learning sprinkled throughout the country. This equals a lot of options. And while not every student will gain admission to the “reach” school of dreams, every student can be coached to apply to a variety of schools where they will be offered admission, and it will be the beginning of reaching an amazing dream anyway.

For many families, hiring a $10,000 college admission coach is not practical or desirable. But it may be that you are anxious about deadlines, details, and essays. Let me suggest an alternative road of moderation. If your student is in tenth grade or below, encourage a “carpe diem” mindset. When authentic, truly interesting opportunities arise to explore a passion, volunteer at a non-profit, play a sport, take a leadership role, or even work at a part-time job, nudge the student to seize the day. When given the choice, encourage the pursuit of depth rather than breadth. Spend time talking casually and periodically about college. Share your own experiences and stories about post-high school years, and ask if they have ideas about their own future. If your student wants to pursue a bachelor degree directly following high school, there is not much preparation before the junior year of high school. A parent can easily oversee the things that need to happen junior year. First, take your student to visit several different kinds of campuses: large, small, rural, urban, religious, secular, public, private. Let them get a sense of what feels comfortable and exciting to them. Try to go when school is in session. The first two days of Thanksgiving week are often in session for colleges, but out of session for high schools.  Book your tours early in the school year. Second, after your student receives his or her PSAT scores (after October but before January), create a College Board account which can be merged with a Khan Academy account to create a customized SAT study program, based on your student’s areas of weakness. It is free! Then, consider paying your student a wage for a set number of hours to study using this program. It is a wise investment, as the program is highly effective, being based on your student’s actual test scores. Next, prompt your student to sign up to take the SAT once in the spring, and again in the summer or early fall.  That is all you need to do junior year. (Note: many college admissions are now test optional. Nevertheless, merit aid sometimes depends on a combination of test scores and GPA, so there is not much harm in taking the SAT if your student is in the academic accomplishment range for merit aid).

So what about senior year? The real work of college applications begins in earnest in the fall, but smart students will begin working on essays and completing their brag sheets in the early summer. Late spring (before summer) is also a good time to reach out to a few teachers, especially ones who know them well, and ask for a letter of recommendation. Teachers expect this, but often have personal limits as to how many letters they decide to write, so asking in the summer is a smart move. Late spring/ early summer is the right time to consider hiring a college application coach. Note the difference in wording: application vs. admission. A college application coach is a limited venture for the specific purpose of getting those applications together and keeping your student on track. A college application coach keeps deadlines in mind, prompts from the sidelines, offers suggestions when the student hits a wall, and edits essays. Basically, as a college application coach, I will help translate your student’s authentically lived life experience in high school into the various parts of the application process, making sure he or she has the best opportunity to show themselves at their best and find the “right fit college.”