Quote of the Day:
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
I hope my readers who are parents of seniors have the great fortune to declare their student’s college applications completed and tied with a bow! If not, please call me at 214.535.4393. I can help!
That said, I am going to focus my blog on tips for parents of the juniors, sophomores and freshmen students.
So, the interesting, challenging, frustrating, and probably much more grueling than expected process of aligning your student for acceptance at his/her dream college has begun! How does a caring parent help their student prepare for this inevitability without deeply annoying the student? Firstly, realize it is basically a teen’s job to be annoyed with us parents, so don’t worry about it too much! But here are some real live tips that I used on my own two sons, now graduates of Harvard and Princeton.
- Help your student organize their schoolwork. Go through backpacks with your student (obviously I’m not an advocate of privacy at this age anyway!) to search for any pertinent notes from teachers, schedules, graded papers.
- Insist on your student keeping a very detailed assignment book with reminder listings such as “study for test next Tuesday in Chemistry”, and the like, not just the actual dates of the events.
- Prioritize academics.
- After the academics are on a roll, help your student define and get interested, and thus gain expertise beyond the norm, in a specific area or activity. Photography, performance on an instrument, poetry; do some research and find contests, camps, internships in the area of interest. This will give your student an opportunity to achieve something noteworthy outside of the high school, and shows initiative and individuality. Much of this activity will take place in the summers.
- Start looking at colleges early. This serves two purposes; the student begins seeing the reality that high school is not forever and hopefully derives inspiration from this knowledge. And it also is a way for the student to begin communicating with the schools.
- Find a mentor for your student in the area of interest. This person could provide a letter of recommendation letter for your student when the time comes.
These suggestions are really only the tip of the iceberg, but they give you an idea of what a well thought-out high school experience looks like.
