College Prep 101: Essential Strategies for Teens to Transition Successfully to College

Okay, wonderful. Let's let the guests come on in. We will get started at the hour, um, we are recording and we will be sharing this for all who registered, so please grab your I guess it would be coffee or water or soda because we're all over the place right now. Uh, international. We have a few international people who have signed up. We have, um, some local people. If you can put in the chat where you are from and the age of your student, that would be incredibly important because we're going to be talking a lot about Um, how to support your child? Well, if your child is in 7th grade, that's very different than if they are in college. So if you can put into the chat, that would be great. Um, Miss Carrie Anderson, she will be managing the chat. Welcome, Carrie. Welcome, everyone. And so Carrie will be going off camera, um, and answering your questions behind the scenes. So Please note, that's what she's doing. She's here to help you. And it looks like— where's the chat? It looks like Kansas City Junior, D.C., transition age. That's always fun. Yeah, Laguna Beach student, 17. Awesome. Palm City, Florida, sophomore and a freshman. Wow, you're busy parents. So I'm super excited to share with you from two very unique perspectives. I'm going to be diving in. I'll explain who I am at the top of the hour, but I'm going to be diving into how to prepare your student for college, but while you're doing it, prepare them for life. So it's kind of a bigger topic than just college admissions. It's kind of a double. And then Dr. Andrea, she's going to be helping with that transition, um, into college, what that looks like. And so we're going to be, um, giving you a ton of resources and support. So, so excited you're here. All right, if you have joined us, please go ahead and add where you're located and the age of your child or children. And then if you have any particular question or opportunity that you're currently facing, we would love to speak to that as well. So you can put it in as a private message, or you can put it in for all to see. But this is really about your time and about your student. So we want to make sure that you are completely prepared. I don't know if you can ever be, but we'll get you as close as we can. We are recording, and so we will be sharing this after. All right, looks good. Everybody's in. All right, I have a raised hand, or maybe not. It went away. All right, if you have any questions, go ahead and put them in the chat. Carrie will be monitoring that. And we're gonna go ahead and get started. We are right on time. Welcome everybody. My name is Shellee Howard and I'm the founder and CEO of CollegeReady. CollegeReady has been around— this is our 17th application season. So we will be talking today, or I will be talking today about college admissions, but also how to prepare your teenager and yourself Right? There's something to that for when your child gets into college and prepares themself to live at college. And welcome, Dr. Andrea Melikin-Brenner.

Thank you for having me.

All right, here we go. So the, the most important thing I want to let you know, parents, is we're going to be going through a lot of information. I would encourage you to take notes if that's how you learn. Otherwise, just be all in. I know distractions are real, I get it. Um, so we're gonna dive in. The topic of today is really how to prepare yourself and your child. I think it's important to know a little bit about my background, and, um, that will lead me into the how. So I myself have 4 children. I have 2 biological and 2 step, and College Ready was started when my firstborn came home from 8th grade and says, Mom, I know exactly what I want to do and exactly where I want to go to college. Can you help me? And I'm like, well, okay, I didn't know where I wanted to go and I changed my major 5 times. So yeah, let me have it. And he said, very matter of fact, he says, I want to go to an Ivy League school and I want to be a brain surgeon. Can you help? And I took a deep breath and I smiled like all good parents do. And I'm like, sure, honey, we've got this. I can totally help you. So I won't go into all of the details. I'm happy to share if you're curious. But when he was getting ready for college, I ended up going back to school. I got my master's degree from UC San Diego. I became a certified independent college consultant. Didn't even know that existed. And then I started touring 25 colleges a semester. That was 17 years ago. Over the last 2 years, our students have earned $23 million in scholarships. How did all of this get started? My son was— when he was in 8th grade, so he applied to 12 schools. He got into 11. 7 were full ride, went to Harvard 4 years pre-med for free, got out and thought, I'm not sure if I want to go to medical school. It sounds like for the rest of my life. So he tried working for a year at Bain Consulting. He had a great experience, but he knew that he wanted so much more. His passion was to help people. So he ended up going to medical school at UC San Diego, and he is a 5th-year resident at UCLA going to be an orthopedic surgeon. So I tell that story because he's just like your child. He didn't know exactly what he wanted to do. He knew what he was good at. He had an idea that he really had a passion for helping people. But beyond that, he was only a teenager. So I'm going to talk about how I supported him and how College Ready supports our students. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. And that way you can follow along as I dive into how can you as a parent prepare your child. I think that's super important. This is about you and your child and their success. And so this is called See Our Future Now. And literally, I came up with that name because I wanted your teenager, your child in transition, to see now what they want. Because when you reverse engineer something, it's a lot clearer than kind of hoping and just, just navigating on a whim. So this is what I'd recommend. Now, if you wanted to go through this with your student, your child, you would go to crfuturenow.com. I built this for you. So this is a great way to have that conversation. What this is, is helping students to be successful adults and reduce the overwhelm. So this is the right place for you if you want to help your child be a successful adult and you want to reduce the overwhelm. So hopefully you're all nodding, going, yes, I would like that very much. A little about CR Future, it all came from my firstborn when we wanted to get him into college without losing my mind or his mind and my money. Um, that was our goal back then. That has always been our goal, and that's how this whole thing got started. These two are my why. This is my son who is now the orthopedic surgeon, and this is my daughter who's now a registered nurse. Their why came from my love of serving. I actually have built 2 schools in Uganda, and I love Africa. And I have now— I'm now working with college-ready students to help them find their mission, their passion, because it gave my children their why. So we'll talk a little bit about how that can help. So let's talk a little bit about maybe your teen has no plans for their future. Maybe they honestly don't know. And then we have to remember, did we know when we were 14, 15, and 16? I don't know about you, but I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Turns out that's what I ended up being. But there were a lot of— there were 5 other majors between what I thought and what I am. So this is the path in which you can start the conversation. Because until there's a conversation, your child may not want to talk about it because it's, it's frustrating for them not to know. So the first thing we talk about is who they are. We help them answer who are they now and who do they want to be. We want to do self-discovery. We don't want it to be shameful later on. We want them to have opportunity to step into it. The next thing we talk about is what matters to them. Do they advocate for this? Do they advocate for that? Do they not have anything they care about? All of those are very important to uncover. Then we talk about how others see them, not in a way of a negative thing, but sometimes people see you in another way that you don't even see yourself. So knowing what your best friend loves about you is a really wonderful thing for them to share. So we ask, "What would your best friend say about you?" And it's an easy question a parent could ask. The next one is, "How do you see yourself?" And I love talking about this one, even with adults, because many people never self-reflect to think, "How do I see myself and what are my gifts and talents and my core values?" That all goes into the process. Then we start to look at different careers. So based on their gifts, their talents, their advocacy, what career map would be the best? Our goal is for them to come up with 3 careers that match up to who they are and what matters. Then we can put the major that gets into that career, or maybe not even a college major. It could be a trade school, but we need some type of career to navigate. Then we talk about ROI and freedom. How important is money to your child? This is a wonderful time to have a fun conversation at dinner. What I recommend that you do is you lay this out for your, your children. They could be probably middle school or high school. This works well, or after. And say, if I gave you $1 million cash, if they're not smiling, you're in trouble. Because if they're not impressed with $1 million, guess what? They have a lot more to understand. But what if they're smiling going, yeah, this is awesome. And then you say, and I'll give you this $1 million cash, but you have 24 hours to spend it or you have to give it all back to me. Now, this is not my advice for you to do this in real life. But what we're trying to do is help them figure out where they would spend their money, because then you can see what's important to them without saying, what's important to you? And they go, I don't know. So you will find that some of them would buy a Learjet, take all their friends to Hawaii, buy a few boats. I had one young man yesterday tell me he'd buy 3 cars. And I'm like, that's so nice. One for mom, one for dad, and one for you. And he goes, no, all for myself. And I'm like, oh. Wonderful. Okay, I now understand what is most important. Then we put it all together. How can they use this information? In my mind, to adult. In my mind, to prepare them for college. In a parent's mind, to prepare them for life. That's what we're trying to position them to get ready for. Then it's a simple question of what are their gifts, their talents, their strengths, the opportunities, and should they go to a 4-year college? Should they go to a 2-year? Should they go to a trade school? Every single student needs to do this uniquely, and I help students. I'll give you an example. I had a student who wanted to be a botanist, and it was making the parent crazy. The parent was so terrified because the student wanted to go to NYU and be a botanist, and the parent knew that NYU is $98,000 a year, and a botanist is not going to make anywhere to pay that. So we got talking, and what I found out from the student is they're very passionate about environmentalism. So it wasn't just that they wanted to plant plants, they wanted to save the earth. Wow, were we able to jump into a lot of great conversations. So sometimes they just don't know what they don't know. Okay, so then we get into the second situation. They don't know where to start. So here's what I want to help you parents understand. The first thing you want to help them with— actually, at this point, it might be helpful if on a piece of paper, if you're using paper and pen, old school, If you're cursive writing, that's way old school, I've heard. But you're going to put on the title, you're going to put, um, who will do each of the following? Okay, will it be you, the parent, the child, or someone else? Because what I'm going to share can overwhelm you tremendously if you think you have to do all of this. So I don't want you to go there. That's not the goal. Is to help you get clarity about who will do it. So the first thing is the academic strategy. Who will plan all of the classes in the right order to be able to apply to any school in the, the US or global? Who will do that? You, student, or someone else? The next one is helping them find their strengths, their careers, assessing their gifts and talents. Will you do that? Will the student do that, or will somebody else? Test strategy. The test strategy is not just to get into college. Many people think it is, and then there's the other side that thinks that testing is optional. Testing is not optional if you want any kind of scholarship and you want the opportunity to apply to any school because they're going test required every day. So even if they are not now, they may be when your child graduates. So in other words, what is their best test? The PSAT, the SAT, the ACT, APs. All of that is important, but not as important as teaching your child how to test well. They will take tests all the way through college. And then as a matter of fact, my son had to do the MCAT and my daughter had to do the NCLEX. If they didn't pass those 2 tests, they couldn't live their dream of their career. So do you see it's not just a thing that needs to be done. It's a skill that needs to be learned. Leadership. This is so important. Will you teach them leadership? Will they teach them self-leadership? Or will somebody else? Because colleges are looking for students to have led 5 things. And guess what? When they graduate from high school, they go to college. If they don't have leadership skills, they may have a really hard time adjusting to living on their own. Extracurricular activities— who will make sure that your student is doing the right ones, the ones they love, and not wasting time or energy doing what they think colleges want them to do? Very important, because extracurricular is the balance of the academia. Oh, without— I almost forgot. If your student is applying to the, um, uh, Common App, they'll list 10 activities, honors, and awards. If they're applying to the University of California schools, it's 20 activities, honors, and awards. I didn't make this up, but you need to know that if they're doing one thing and they put one on there and somebody's got 20, it's going to be difficult to get a scholarship or even get accepted. And then letters of recommendation. Who will decide who the student will ask to be a letter of recommendation? This is not just to get into college. They're going to need these letters of recommendation to get their first job or second job, to get opportunities for an internship. These things are preparing them for life, not just for college. Essays. The essays are going to be so important. This is what I want you to understand about the college essay. There's no, there's no perfect answer. There's a lot of scary ones you don't want to allow them to do. Taking their own life, or possibly doing, or a friend doing, or severe mental illness. There's some things that are gonna put up a red flag to a university. You have to be very careful about what they share. So it's important to think about all of those activities. Honors awards should set them up to write brilliant essays about things they've accomplished. A lot more fun to write about. And then passion with purpose. I alluded to this. This is where students figure out who they are, what they're good at, and those things that they are going to impact the world. And guess what? When they are serving another human being, they are testing out skills. Do I like the elderly? Do I like littles? Do I like people? I've had students who don't like people, and so we want to make sure that we're helping them understand community service. Be careful not to push them into something you're passionate about and expect them just to be super excited about it. If they're going to get up early on a Saturday morning, you want to make sure that it's their passion, they're driving it, and it is something they want to see changed. You will find this is going to be the same thing they're going to do when they get to college. They start to make new friends. They start to prepare for life. It's all setting them up for success. And then you want to look at opportunities for scholarships. When they apply for scholarships, they're going to have to write essays about why they should win that scholarship, right? These are all things where everybody wants to know who they are and what matters to them. When they demonstrate interest to a university, they're going to have to say, why do you want to go to Stanford? And if they just say, because I've always wanted to live in Northern California in the middle of trees, that is not going to do it. They need to understand themselves to speak to why Stanford would be a good fit. And then if you're feeling overwhelmed about this entire process, I would really suggest you look at the Vault and how we simplify it for the student. We take away the overwhelm, and you can watch this right after the, the presentation. Just go to the website and hit play. I'm not going to take the time to do that now because we have a lot to share, but inside the Vault you'll see how you can simplify it as a parent to take away the overwhelm and actually make it fun. So here's what you want to be considering to help your child prepare themself and to get in as well as make that transition. The first one is how much academic rigor can they handle, right? You don't want to freak out, stress out, overwhelm your child, but you also don't want to make it so easy that they're not interested and they start to slack. You want to make sure that they're taking the test. You want to make sure that they're doing something they're passionate about with a purpose they want to see in their future. You want to help prepare them to lead in extracurriculars that will provide recommenders, that will give them wonderful things to write essays about. This is the secret to getting in and preparing your child for the future. So I wanted to share a couple of gifts that I wanted to give you, and then I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Andrea. The first one is I just released my second bestselling book. It is currently for $0.99 on Amazon, and it's called The College Admissions Plan Simplified. All you have to do to go to get this is go to Amazon, and it simplifies step by step for you and your child. It's only 200 pages. And then the second thing is I want to invite your teenager, anyone from 7th grade on up, to be a part of our free Passion with Purpose project where they can earn community service hours and leadership from the comfort of their own home once a week. We have just recently built 2 schools in Uganda. We're supporting an orphanage in Oaxaca, and this year we're adding Ecuador and Egypt. Our goal is to empower these children through the love of education. If you have any questions, you can email me here. All right, so at this point, it is my pleasure to, uh, open up the stage to Dr. Andrea. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, Shellee. I really appreciate it. And hello, everyone. I'm going to do a little bit of a different presentation. I'm actually just going to talk to you as if I were sitting across the table from you or sitting in your living room. I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself and then talk to you a little bit about the transition to college. So Shellee kind of kicked us off in the work that one does in middle school or high school to get to college. And I want to take that from college and beyond. So, as Shellee Howard said, I'm Dr. Andrea Malkin Brenner. I'm actually a sociologist by training. I have a PhD in sociology, and I was a sociology professor for 20 years at American University in Washington, DC, where I live. One of the things I studied and did a lot of writing about was sociology of the first-year student, and that is really my passion, is studying both academically and kind of the emotional psychosocial piece of the microcosm that is the student in their first year of college. It's really a very unique body of language, body of literature. Um, and so when American University decided that they were going to create a First-Year Experience program, a mandatory full-year class for all of their students, um, I was the natural choice to actually write that curriculum and, and start the program there. Um, and since then I've worked with many, many colleges creating First-Year Experience programs. Um, I have After 25 years on a college campus, I left to start my own business. I wrote the book How to College with a colleague, and we are now— the book is now in close to 60 colleges. I think we're at 58 colleges as the mandatory first-year reading book, which has been really, really exciting. And thank you for putting those links, those links in there. So I started doing a lot of speaking at high schools across the country, both private schools and public schools. And what would happen was I I'd talk a little bit about the transition to college. I'd mention my book, and I would get a line of parents who would come up and say, "I loved your book, and also I can't get my 17-year-old to read a book. What else do you have?" And so that kind of prompted me to think, well, what could I do? What is a hands-on tactile resource that would really help families, parents and students both prepare for the transition to college? And what I did was I created my first deck, and they're called the Talking College Cards, talkingcollege.com. We sell them on the website, we sell them on Amazon, lots of stores, etc. And they are literally conversation prompts about the transition to college. I currently have 5 decks out, one specifically about the transition to college for parents and students, one in Spanish, one for neurodiverse kids. We have one coming out in Mandarin. I have one all about insider tips for campus tours, etc., etc. And like Shellee Howard, I am a believer that dinner table conversation should really be the first start talking in a, in a very familial way between parents and students about what that means. What does going to college mean? What does college cost? What do you want to do with your life? I am a true believer though that this should be a once-a-week activity that I think especially starting in junior year of high school can be very overwhelming, especially for teens when college is spoken about all the time. And so when I work with families, I encourage them pick a night, maybe a Tuesday night when everybody's home, and that's going to be our time where we have conversations. Either they're conversations that you're prompting yourself, or you could use my resources or other resources, etc. So I want to tell you a bunch of stuff in my little bit of time that I have with you, um, but I think really where I want to start is I would love people to just breathe. Um, it can be a very overwhelming process. There is a ton of literature out there. There's a lot of incorrect information out there, and the most important thing to do is to realize a few things. Number one, we would never expect our students to perform in an orchestra without having taken a violin lesson. We wouldn't expect them to be a fabulous soccer player without having gone to practices. And why would we expect our students to thrive in a college environment without helping them prepare, right? So preparation is the key to child rearing, teen rearing, and certainly the transition to college. So the earlier the better. And I'm asked often, when should we start talking about this? And Shellee and I are very much on the same page. It's never too early, but we don't have to talk about all of the details that a senior is gonna be talking about when they're in 7th grade. But really, we should be talking about the transition pieces and that preparation is important. The next thing, number 2, that I wanna talk about is the fact that when it feels overwhelming that you're thinking about sending your child to college in 5 years, in 1 year, wherever you may be, I want you to remember, and this is coming from someone who worked for 25 years on college campuses, that that campus is not expecting your 18-year-old to come a polished adult. They are expecting messy teens, messy in their body, messy in their brains. This is a developmental brain, and it is absolutely appropriate that mistakes are going to be a big part of it. And it doesn't mean that your student's a failure. It means that they just haven't learned all of those steps yet and they're still developing. So I'm gonna give you some, some keys as I talk about kind of how to focus on this. So the first one I wanna mention is kind of the big college student challenges. And I'm gonna talk about mistakes and challenges and they're very different. So college student challenges, and these are challenges that most, new college students, and I would say doesn't matter if it's a small private liberal arts school or a giant rah-rah state school, these are very developmentally appropriate challenges for an 18, 19-year-old brain. Number one is time management, and if your student is neurodiverse, that can be even more challenging. Um, big differences between high school and college when it comes to time management. Your student's high school experience and even their middle school experience has been very regimented. School starts and ends at the same time each day. The average high school student in the US is in class 35 hours a week. Now we wonder why our high school kids are so exhausted. Many of them have extracurricular activities or jobs or sports on top of that, but they are regimented. They are told when to show up. They are told what time to eat lunch. They actually work on a bell or buzzer system, and that changes dramatically when they're in college. They may have a full day of classes on Monday and no classes at all on Tuesday, and then every other Wednesday could be a seminar at 9:00 PM. Their schedule is all over the place. And for students who struggle with time management, that can be a real adjustment. College students report— first-year college students report that they've never had so much free time in their life as they did their first semester of college, which can be both wonderful and troubling. Wonderful because they have time to try new activities, to study, hopefully, to meet friends, to explore new things, to really figure out who they are. And also a challenge because a lot of them will just game or nap or Netflix and chill. So that's something that's really important to start talking about as early as possible, maybe at those Tuesday night dinner table conversations. Lots of first-year students struggle with time management. Let's talk about how life is going to look different in your first year of college. Than it did in high school when you were so regimented. What are you gonna do? How are you gonna handle that? So number 1 would be time management. Number 2, first-year college student challenge would be roommate disagreements. And that's something that is surprising to many parents who think, "I have a friendly kid. Why would they have trouble with their roommates?" And there's a couple of answers to that. Number 1, a lot of students have had the same friends since, you know, kindergarten or first grade, right? And the friends that they have, they've made beyond that, they've made online, their Instagram friends or their Facebook friends. Meeting real-life people who are very, very different than your student might be is sometimes quite a bit of a challenge. And those could be differences racially, socioeconomically, geographically, religion-wise, politically. There's so many differences. And of course, high schools are much more homogeneous than colleges. Colleges are very, very diverse, with the exception of, of some. Most are much more diverse than what your student probably had in high school. And it's sometimes really challenging to speak across difference. And one great example, and it's actually a card that I have in all of my card decks because I think it's so important, and also I'm wearing my sociologist hat here, is, you know, talking to your student, well, what will you do if you have a group of friends who want to go out for sushi one night in college? And so you do, but you have another friend who absolutely can't afford that. They need to only eat on the meal plan because that's how their scholarship is, is situated. And what do you do? How do you handle that? How do you handle talking across socioeconomic difference? So that's just one little tidbit for students to start thinking about and really Figuring out how to work with roommates is incredibly, incredibly important. One thing I talk about a lot in my book and in my card decks is that the aim is not to be best friends with your roommate in your freshman year of college, it's to be best roommates with your roommate. So it would be wonderful to have friends outside of that experience, uh, people that you can socialize with, you can count on emotionally, etc. But a roommate is someone who should be, um, really easy to live with, somebody who respects your belongings, your time, your space, et cetera. So that's something, something to think about. Another challenge that I'd love to talk about is students report that they get homesick in their first semester of college. And when I tell this in parent groups, a lot of parents say, "They're gonna miss me." And that's actually not what they mean. Yes, some will miss their parents, but that's not what they're claiming. They're actually claiming that they are missing siblings. They are really missing pets. And most importantly, college freshmen are missing the ease of home, that they can just open up the fridge or the cabinet and miraculously their favorite foods are there. They didn't have to purchase them. They didn't have to actually put them in the refrigerator or the cabinet. And it really is a lot in college when students have to be their own advocate. They have to say, you know, this is a particular granola bar I like. I need to go find it in a store and purchase it and have it in my room. For when I want it. So the ease of home, the ease of somebody reminding you things regularly, even if it's annoying to you as a teen, it's really, really nice. And those are the new things that sometimes make students quite homesick. Another thing that first-year students struggle with is getting, getting ill, getting sick, either mental health that might rear its ugly head in their first year of college or physical health, you know, Freshman dorms are like petri dishes. So if somebody gets a cold, most people do. And we have a whole section in our card decks on health, taking care of yourself. Everything from, do you know what to pack, what to take for a cold? What about medications that you currently take? Are you taking things that you know the prescription, you know that it might interact negatively with an over-the-counter medication for, let's say, a cold? You know, if somebody is taking care of you forever when you are ill, is that something that you're able to do on your own? And then in terms of mental health, um, especially if your student has not struggled tremendously with mental health before, what's the difference between stress, which is a really normal college experience, and distress, which is when outside help— might be campus outside help, but outside help beyond that little student and their friend group— might be able to help. So those are great conversations to have. Another thing that students find is a challenge in their first year of college is course selection, and that often takes families by surprise. Surprise. I would say it's probably even more stressful in large schools, and I'll explain why. So I think when a student is in high school, often when they're a junior or senior and they're taking a lot of required courses, they think, I cannot wait to get to college and take all of these very maybe obscure advanced courses. I, I can't wait to take, you know, nuclear physics, and I can't wait to take abnormal psychology courses that high school has prepped me for, but they're not offered in my high and a lot of them get to college and they didn't realize that many colleges have core requirements in their freshman year and that many of the college— of the courses that they're going to have to take in that first year, at least in that first semester, are required, and they don't have a lot of selection. They will have selection down the road, but a lot of colleges are not going to offer those really exciting classes until their sophomore, their junior, or their senior year. So it's better for students to be prepared. That course selection might kind of seem similar to the high school course selection, at least in the beginning of college. And then finally, the last common first-year student challenge I wanna mention is students not being accepted into their group of choice. And that can, that can play out a bunch of different ways. Sometimes it's a friend group. They feel like, your first-year student might feel like they found their people and that maybe those weren't really weren't their people. Or they may rush a fraternity or sorority that doesn't work for them. And that could be devastating to students. If a student has come out of a high school where they're sort of big fish, little pond, they're maybe the best singer in their high school, and then they go to a large college and they're up against 20 of the best singers from their high schools and they may not make their first choice a cappella group, that can be quite devastating. So really talking to your student well in advance. I know you have your heart set on the XYZ, But what if you're not accepted onto that team or into that group or as the editor of the school paper? It's different than high school. It's going to be more challenging. Okay, so those are some of the challenges I wanted to mention. Now I want to switch a little bit and talk about first-year common mistakes. So challenges are things we're not necessarily trying to avoid, but we're kind of educating you on it. And mistakes are things that actually can be avoided. So the first one is almost every student in their first year of college will lose or break something important. No question about it. It might be their winter coat, their laptop, their phone, etc. Be prepared for that and know that if you are the first phone call or text, push it back on them. I lost my winter coat. What should I do? You know what? That's terrible. You must be cold. Why don't you think some options through and call me back where you have some solutions, and we can then talk more about it. Not using campus resources is another big one. If you've been on any college tour, you've probably heard all the different campus resources that they have, from mental health counseling to academic support to a writing center, um, LGBTQ support. I mean, you name it, colleges have enormous amount of support. But those support resources are only useful if your student crosses the threshold, right? So it doesn't matter if there's wonderful TA hours, um, or tutoring if they're actually not going and using those resources. And keep in mind that most campus resources are already included in your tuition dollars. So, you know, you're paying for something that your student might not be using. So it's a really great experience even when your student is looking at colleges, to sit with them and look at the different campuses they're interested in. Look at the websites, figure out what all that campus support is. Maybe it's disability support, maybe it's English as a, um, a second language speaker support. It exists everywhere. It's called something different on every college campus, which can be a little frustrating, but it's wonderful to go into college with ideas with your student, for your student about those different resources and what they should be looking at. You know, one of the silver linings of COVID not that many, but one of the silver linings of COVID is that every campus resource now has a really interactive website. And that's a terrific thing to know. And not— I would not suggest waiting till your student has, you know, put their deposit and has decided where they're going to college. When they're looking at colleges, check out those resources with them and sit with them, encourage them to look at them. What does disability support look at, like at this college versus this college, if that's something that you're gonna need? Or mental health counseling. How many free mental health sessions are available at this college versus that college? That will all be available online. Another common first-year student mistake is making a poor financial decision. And that's why talking about budgeting is so important. And Shellee's mentioned talking about money, I can't stress that enough, starting with what does college cost? I am amazed when I've done research projects and I've done focus groups with hundreds of freshmen to find out that many of them have no idea of that financial impact on their family or maybe on themselves down the road. So that's an important conversation to have. And if your student hasn't budgeted for their own life, knowing what they're spending when they go to CVS or what, uh, one cup of coffee at Starbucks costs. That's something that you can encourage them to do, um, in— while they're still in high school and actually sit down and talk about what they're purchasing, what did it cost, how could they maybe have done that differently. Hopefully the poor financial decision they make in college is not a very large one. Often what we see is students running out of meal swipes in the cafeteria right before finals Of course, that can be remedied by purchasing more meal swipes. But these are things that you and your student should really be talking about. I do encourage a conversation as early as possible about what budgeting will look like if you are planning on giving your student any monthly money, etc. Credit cards versus debit cards versus a checkbook, you know, what all that looks like if your student is unfamiliar. Another one, again, we're talking about first-year college student mistakes, is not asking for academic help. And that is something that's very different in high school. If your student is really struggling in a class in high school, often the teacher will contact the student, or maybe even the parents, which is legal in high school, both in public and private high schools. In college, there's no conversation at all between a professor and a parent. That's not a thing. It's, it's under federal law that can't happen, but also the student is now viewed by that college as a young adult. The problem is that in college your student is going to have far fewer grades in a particular class than they had in high school. So if you were like me, and I could— I don't know that my student, my son, would have ever gotten through high school had he not been sent reminders by his teachers regularly. Don't forget, chemistry test this Friday, or turn in this paper. That doesn't happen in college. So if your student is really struggling, um, not necessarily with the content of academics but the study skills of academics, that's something to think about early and often. Um, in college, the best method is for your student to be entering those office hours as early as possible and as often as possible. Possible. And those could be office hours with a professor or even with the TA for the class. Sometimes it's a great idea to just go in and introduce yourself. And I love telling students I work with, one semester when I taught at AU, I had 13 Ashleys over the course of one semester of 3 different courses. And if those Ashleys didn't come to my office hours, I would not have known one from another. So it's your student as their own advocate academically. Because they will have far fewer grades, it's really important that those grades matter and they are aware how they're weighted. So if your student, for example, says, "You know what, Mom, I did really poorly on this history test, but it's okay because I have 10 more grades this marking period," they're actually speaking the truth. In college, that's not the story. Um, an undergrad class might have 2, 3, or 4 grades, and those grades are weighted much more heavily. So they're really needing to figure out how they're doing and staying on top of that. Two more that I want to mention. The, the second to last important college student mistake that you should be aware of is students getting over-involved or under-involved with extracurricular activities. And that's something that's really hard for those of us who work with college students to teach first-year college students. They've been on that rat race and you heard Shellee Howard giving great advice about extracurricular activities and following passions, etc. It's really hard for them to kind of get off that gerbil wheel of, I gotta do, do, do, I gotta show leadership, leadership, leadership. And of course it's important to do, do, do and show leadership in college, but it's different. It's not for the path of getting into the next place. It's for honing themselves as an individual. So I have a rule of 3. This is my own thinking, so you can do what you want with it, but I think it's a great way to kind of template out what a student might do. Um, instead of— so that they don't get too under-involved or too over-involved. So my rule of 3 is this: freshman in college, I'd love you to choose 3 extracurricular activities. One that is your own passion— could be a rec soccer team, it could be a photography club, something that you're going to meet people who are similar to you and you're going to be doing something you love that maybe you didn't even have time for in high school. Second— so first is for yourself, Second is something for others. So that might be volunteer experience through, uh, Campus Spiritual Life Association, um, or a religious group. It might be, um, helping, um, tutor low-income kids in a community through a community outreach program. Whatever it is, it's a way of giving back. So something for yourself, something for others, and then the rule of three, the third is something for your career or academic path. And that could be something as joining a psychology club, um, or going to chemistry lectures, uh, joining a business fraternity, whatever that might be, whatever your student's career path is. And of course, that can be changed. So rule of 3 for not getting too over-involved or too under-involved: some passion area for your students, their own well-being for themselves, something that they can give back for others. And a lot of— by the way, a lot of students do enter Greek life, sorority and fraternity life, and those are filled with lots of volunteer opportunities. Um, and then the third would be doing something for their own career path or academic path. And then finally, and possibly the most disturbing of all the college student mistakes, is making a poor social decision, often involves alcohol and drugs. And I know that that's something that many families feel a little bit awkward talking about, but it's really, really important they do. I actually just worked with a family recently and the mom said, you know, we're not even going to talk about that because our student doesn't, doesn't drink and doesn't do any drugs. There's no interest in that. They will not be going to college parties. And I, my response was, good for them, that's fabulous. But what is your student going to do if their roommate is throwing up from being drunk in the middle of the night, or they have a friend who's gotten themselves in trouble because they went to a party and they didn't have a buddy system? So being knowledgeable regardless of that student's own actions, it's really, really important. And again, Tuesday night dinner table conversation. So I've got one more piece I want to talk about, and then Shellee Howard and I will take some Q&A. And this is kind of my message to parents, which is I'd love you to think about what are the things that you're currently doing as the parent of a high school student that you can step back from instead of waiting till that summer before college to say, all right kid, you're going to go from dependent to independent overnight. I believe in chunking it out in baby steps. So are you still waking your student with an alarm? Are you still packing their lunch? Are you still reminding them to bring their cleats to soccer practice? What are little ways that you can step back, ways that you can step back, and if your student forgets or fails, it's not going to derail their life? You might get their coach annoyed because they didn't have the right uniform, or they may get, um, a grade is dropped because they didn't turn their history paper in on time, but they'll learn the next time. And I think that's really, really important. Um, so what I love to call it is loving support versus detrimental enabling. I don't believe in the term overparenting. I think that we all parent from a place of goodness. We all want the best for our our kids. But what are the ways that you— we can step back a little bit, tiny little pieces, um, where we're maybe reminding too many times? Maybe we're waking our kid with an alarm and they don't really need to be, be woken with an alarm when they're in high school. They need to learn how to do all these things in order for them to pick up some of these important college skills, these adulting skills, these college-ready skills., it's great to start as early as possible. So I'm going to end there, and I think we'll turn over to some questions.

Wonderful. Well, that was such great— I was taking notes. That was amazing. I have 4 young adults, and I'm like, ah, I see where I blew it. So I'm going to be one of those people who say, I wish I would have known you before I put all 4 through that opportunity. The one thing I would add, uh, parents, as you're thinking about preparing them, is this generation really struggles with failure. There's something about, uh, the world they live in that it's not okay to fail. And that's because maybe social media— I don't know what it is. But when I ask a student to step out of their comfort zone and they are like big eyes, I ask them Why are you, why are you worried? I'm, you know, we're doing this together. And they said, well, I don't want to fail. And I'm like, well, wouldn't you want to fail now before you go away to college? So, you know how I mean, everybody's going to have failure. There's, that's inevitable. So maybe by doing what was just suggested, I know it might be uncomfortable, but I will, I will end with this. Story. So hopefully you parents will be smiling, and then we'll take Q&A. When I sent my son off to Harvard, when I dropped him off, it was a brutally hot day in Boston, and I was— couldn't wait to get out of there, back to my hotel.

I was so—

I felt like I was just dying. And all the other parents were crying, and my son looks at me and he says, Mom, aren't you sad? And I'm like, are you kidding me? You're living the dream. I— my job is done. Like, we're good. And he's like, but aren't you sad? I'm like, no, as a matter of fact, I could not be more proud of you. And I, I was just so excited for him. And then I got on the airplane and I cried my eyes out. So just know, parents, that it, it is interesting. And all 4 of mine were different when I did the drop-off. But I believe by having these conversations early I always reassured my child, this is what I want for you. I want this for you. And don't worry about me, because that's not an area you didn't speak of, Dr. Andrea. But, you know, some parents hold on pretty tight and some students don't want to leave because they're worried about the parent. So as we circle back to questions, let me start with How do you help your teen make healthy choices expressing their sexuality, exploring relationships in college? Hmm, I'll let you take that one.

Sure, that's a big question. Uh, great question though. Um, again, starting to have these discussions early, even if they're uncomfortable. Letting your student, your teen, know that you're there for them, that you don't expect who they are today is who they're going to be forever. But exploration is a huge part of defining who they are and who they are going to become. Again, a great opportunity to start that conversation besides my Talking College Cards. And we have lots of information in there about— we have a whole section on relationships— is going to the resources on the college websites. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. That could be in the wellness center. Most colleges have a wellness center and, or an LGBTQIA center. There they have wonderful discussion prompts at most of those websites. I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of those websites across campuses, and they will actually give you prompts for conversations. There'll be webinars for, for students, for parents to attend to, to have some of these early conversations. I think the most important thing is to let your student know that you're there and that you don't necessarily have every answer, but that you're happy to listen, you're happy to brainstorm, and you're happy to talk. One thing I'd love to say about this is many of our 12 to 18-year-olds come to us, us as parents, as the defining voice. And I think it's really important when— Shellee mentioned this as well— is to realize that the teaching a part of parenting doesn't have to only be done by parents. And so you— there might be a better person to have conversations than you in some situations. And maybe relationships or discovering identity is something that a neighbor, an older sibling, um, a, a close family friend, an aunt or an uncle, a teacher, a mentor— there's so many people, adult folks in our kids' lives. And I think it's really, really important sometimes to say, I'm going to give you my opinion about it, but this is just one person who knows you really well as your parent, but I think it's a great idea for you to have conversations with others with different relationships and perspectives also.

Wow, that was so great. Here's another one for you, another huge question. If ADHD brains are 3 to 5 years delayed in their EF skills, how do we help ADHD neurodivergent teens have the right level of failure and college?

A great question, and I speak a lot to neurodivergent populations. Um, well, first of all, I got to put in a plug for my Talking College, College Ready deck, which, um, actually the content was not created by me. It was created by, um, experts from across the country who really contributed the material, um, and a lot of it deal with executive functioning skills. So what I would say is You know, that deck would be a great place to start. That deck is also a great place to start to decide with your teen if a gap year is helpful. And, you know, college is right for many, many students. It's not necessarily right immediately after high school for all. And especially with students focusing on— students who have executive functioning challenges and are maybe not 100% ready for adult problem solving or independent living skills. I think it's really important for families as they're deciding to have a checklist of if my kid can do this, they're probably college ready. And if they're lagging behind in these, this is something that needs to be worked on. So it could be summer programs and there are wonderful summer programs. If anybody emails me, I'm happy to suggest some personally to, you know, for your students' needs. So summer skill building, that could be academic, it could be life skills, it could be social skills. I would say take advantage of summers for sure. Even, you know, as early as 9th, 10th grade, that summer before high school is really hard to try to learn everything. But also, if you're okay with it, be open-minded in thinking about a gap year. And a gap year can be a wonderful opportunity for that student to really take some time to work or have an internship or take some college classes, maybe live outside of the home independently. There are many programs across the country that have dorm-style living. They're either full-year programs, semester programs, summer programs that can, that can kind of handhold your child through common first-year mistakes. One thing I just want to say here is that we talk, and Shellee Howard's mentioned failure, I've also mentioned failure, There's also something on a college campus called failure to thrive, which is your student might be absolutely nailing it academically, but they could be still failing to thrive. Not failing academically, but failing to thrive in that they're just surviving. They're not actually moving forward. And so sometimes it takes students, and many of them who have executive functioning challenges, just a little bit longer to get college ready. Um, and so I, I would be open-minded about that. Um, and if you want to email me individually, I'm happy to have a conversation with you.

Wonderful. Okay, next question. I will take this one. Without having to go tour the university college directly, what are some resources to start to find out if the college is going to be good for my kid? Class size, diversity, weather. I would love to show you the resource that we have, and then I'll give you a few others. So I'll share my screen. Um, I, when I was doing this with my oldest, had 33 spreadsheets that we had researched. I have since built this custom vault. Um, this is a fake student. I'm not sharing anything personal, but the— how we're able to do it is we can show you any college in the world, literally the world, and show you is what, what about that school. So We can show you the size of the school. We can show you how many women and men applied, how many enrolled. We can show you the GPA, the test scores. We can show you what they consider, what they don't consider, retention rate, graduation rate, cost. Do they use the FAFSA, the CSS Profile? Then we can come down into, do they offer loans? Here's one on race, diversity, ethnicity. This is critical for some people. Other people don't care. Do they offer housing? Um, all of Greek life and sports. Not every college has every major. So here's a big one that I encourage families to really look at. If they wanted to do biology, the University of Texas Austin is not known for biology. So this may not be the perfect fit for them academically. So it's really the deep dive in the research. Then for other resources, you want to use the online college tours. They're amazing. I mean, since— to your point, since COVID I mean, prior to COVID, they were not great, but because of COVID they really are, are super strong. There's nothing like being on a campus. And what I'd recommend that you do is treat it like a museum, an art gallery, um, uh, something of interest. I started doing college tours when my kids were in 5th grade, not as you must go here, but have them go, wow, this is so different than high school. Are they really just laying on the grass studying? Like, the questions that would come up just by exposing them, not being intense by it. Hopefully that was helpful.

And I just add one thing, Shellee. I agree 100%, and that website is absolutely amazing. Another thing I would suggest, and I am also a believer as a Shellee, the earlier the better, but not to put college on the brain, just to show them that college environment is— college campus is something that you don't want to feel— it doesn't want— it shouldn't feel overwhelming. So I would say if you've got free day, go to whatever colleges in your hometown. Walk around, walk your dog, go to the art museum there, go to an athletic event or a play that's open to the public. If you're on vacation and you're near a university, just drop on— drop in by. You don't even have to take the full college tour, just so your student, by the time they're actually starting to think about colleges seriously, the end of 10th grade, they've been on many different campuses, and they know the difference between an urban and a rural campus, a small, a medium, a large campus, you know, a campus that has school spirit versus one that doesn't. I think it's really important so you're not starting from scratch when they're also scrambling getting through their junior year of college— of high school, excuse me.

Wow, what a great opportunity. You offer so much hopeful information. Is there any last bit of information before we close our time today that you didn't get to share that you're dying to share? Did you give it all up?

I think I gave it all up. People, I just want to encourage families to just relax. The process is doable. It does feel overwhelming. We can't let it get to us. Again, I want to stress Picking specific times to talk about the transition to college, talk about college in general, that it doesn't hang over your heads every single day, many, many years. It's, it's a transition in life. It's not the ultimate. And also, I think it's important to say that we need to look at the college transition process, at the college application and transition process through our kids' lens, right? Sometimes as parents, we want to say, I can picture— I remember actually walking around campus with my daughter and with my husband, and we went on one of her first college tours. And at the end of the tour, we looked at her and we said, oh my gosh, we could totally see you here. Perfect, right? And she looked at us like we were out of our mind. And she said, I'm not even applying here. I didn't feel a connection at all. And we should have kept our mouth shut. We should have said, what did you think? Rather than putting our own feelings behind that. So it's hard to do as parents because we're big sharers, we're big fixers, we like to do that. But you know, the more we can just let our kids think, say, talk, and ask them what they think rather than giving them our own input first, the better.

Fantastic. I'm going to bring up one more time the gifts that I want to give you for being on the call. The first one is the— my brand new book, How to Simplify This Process. And also a gift to your student on how they can find their passion, live with purpose, all from the comfort of their own home. So thank you all very much for being on the call. It has been our pleasure, and we wish you all the best. Reach out if there's anything we can do to support you.

Thank you so much.