Annual reminder to parents of h.s. juniors / A seldom-mentioned part of the job

Happy New Year, Everyone, from the Content Team at Jamie Berger Enterprises!

First off, here’s my annual note to parents of high-school juniors:

With or without the help of someone like me, ***NOW*** is the time to start

- putting together a college list
- planning visits
- deciding which or whether to take SAT/ACT and signing up
and even
- taking a look at the Common Application essay prompts to start pondering/brainstorming

***

The other day I found myself listening to a radio show/podcast I don’t usually follow, Hidden Brain. The episode was called “What Do You Want to Be?” (here’s a link to the episode page, and/but you can find it on your usual podcast app) and it covers a lot of issues and situations that come into play in college admissions counseling.

Perhaps the most challenging part of helping families make their way through the winding, if not tortuous, path of college selection is helping everyone get on the same page. Students have expectations and dreams, of course, but so do parents, extended family and friends, and even high schools. (The year that I was a junior in high school, the valedictorian gravely disappointed our school’s administration by choosing to head out west to Reed College, turning down Harvard!!!).

Helping all of the involved parties understand each other and get on the same page is a huge part of my job, and one I’m proudest of helping facilitate. Sometimes that takes compromising by both parents and applicants, every once in a while including applying to almost polar opposite programs (music conservatory vs. pre-med comes to mind as one example in my experience) and waiting to see what the options will be come springtime. While I have had one parent openly dissatisfied with my overall work in the end (really, just one), I haven’t ended up with a single situation in which I wasn’t able to help everyone understand/hear each other, help a family come together and work out what is best for all, primarily the applicant but, in the end, for all.

Part of deciding where to go to college involves helping young people decide what direction they want to head, I’d say not so much “what” they want to be, but “who” they want to be. I wish this were a process that started much earlier than junior year of high school, but it usually isn’t. Young people are pulled one way and the other, but are rarely actively encouraged to figure out what they want, independently and incrementally. The podcast episode I mentioned addresses just that, and much more, for humans of all ages - give the episode a listen, it will inform your process!

Onward!