Getting your high school student ready for college

I went through this process as a single parent and it's not easy, but here are some ideas that helped us. Hopefully they'll help you as well.

Check out The Colleges That Change Lives consortium.  There are about 40 participating colleges, and the concept grew out of education columnist Loren Pope's bestseller about what these schools offer — a focused commitment to the student; smaller class sizes; programming and support for out-of-classroom experiences; an academic and communal experience that transforms the student in positive ways. Their tuition ranges vary as well. Just because they're not part of the Ivy League brand does not make them inferior by any means. My own child attended one of the CTCL schools; it lived up to its promises. (Contact me if you want details).

When you attend college fairs or make campus visits, prompt your child to get to know faculty/staff key to the admissions process, not just pick up brochures. Have your student dress for the occasion as he would for a job interview; you wouldn't believe how many kids show up for college fairs dressed for a day at the beach (in shorts and flipflops). When particular colleges capture his interest, have your child exchange business cards with those key individuals, and send a follow-up note that thanks the faculty/staff member for their time, and includes more pointed questions. As with sales touchpoints, this helps to build the relationship. And trust this: very few teenagers take this approach, so if your child does this, he'll stand out. And he should ask questions, because it's four years of his life that he'll be investing with them, not just the other way around.

You can create a card for your child (see illustration) that profiles him as a candidate. Leave the GPA blank so he can handwrite the latest as he gets deeper into the process. Include AP classes, SAT scores, unique capabilities, anything you want flagged for attention. Again, very few teens do this, so he'll stand out.

You'll be able to sense when a school has a smart enrollment management strategy. For starters, it'll be more than "bodies in/bodies out." A ho-hum, lackluster admissions representative is a poor showing. The admissions counselor of my daughter's college was enthused, engaging, and extremely proactive about recruiting her. They traded emails that addressed her questions about life at the college. Another incentive: if she applied by October of her senior year, they'd waive the application fee. When each college charges fifty to a hundred bucks in application fees, this is a big help, especially if your child applies to more than three or four colleges. 

You might also check out the FAFSA website (www.fafsa.gov). That's the Federal financial aid resource. In January of your child's senior year in high school, you'll want to fill out an application. It's allocated on a first-come-first-served basis: the sooner you do this in the year, the better your options (ie, January versus July). Do it every year your kid's in college. Do not worry that the info you give them may be subject to change. The financial aid offices of the college will fine-tune as your child's circumstances become more imminent. 

Being a transfer student might ease the process. We didn't do this but a lot of families have their kids attend the first two years of college in a local school close to home, to benefit from in-state cost breaks. This also helps the child adjust gradually to living away from home, and affords the family a couple more years to save for tuition. Then they have their child transfer to the college of their choice, because sometimes it's easier to get in as a transfer. This isn't always a desirable solution, but a solid alternative.

Have your child create a web site or social media presence showcasing special talents or interests. For example, is your child eager to study creative writing? Every writer in the world is urged to create a platform, and this will show she's savvy about social media, professional about her passion, and knows how to communicate her ideas to a larger audience. She can also start a Facebook page for the same purpose. With every new blog post on her web site, she can also post it to her Facebook page, Tweet it, even load it with images onto Pinterest. It doesn't have to be perfect: just make it exist with a professional tone. She can then encourage admissions folks to visit those sites.

About social media.... After he applies, the colleges will likely have a work-study student check out his social media. This is a great opportunity: have your child synch up his social media identity to be consistent with how he wants colleges to perceive him. You wouldn't believe how many kids apply and say, "I'm a passionate student of international relations and read The Economist weekly," but their Facebook pages are riddled with behaviors like "F**k you, man, I'm going to blow it out my *** this weekend!! KEGGER!!!" True story. Don't let a deal-killer come from temporary lapses in judgment.

Putting together the next college class is intentionally creating a new community, not just about grades but about who each freshman is as an individual. Sorry to be longwinded, but this can be a daunting process and I wanted to "pay it forward." If I could get through this, then you can too.

Twilight's Last Gleaming: The Role of 9/11

A photo montage with a portrait of each 9/11 victim

I lost no one on 9/11/01, but every year I try to read about some of the victims — who they were, where they were in their lives, who they left behind. There was the firefighter with the older-model Wagoneer that was constantly breaking down. The EMT who should've had a day off, but turned on his heel to run back into the first smoking tower. The bright-eyed middle-schooler on her first flight to another city. 9/11 gave us a new "Spoon River" anthology of lives, cruelly interrupted .

My father was in New York City that day with a Chinese film crew, and I had three or four friends traveling in commercial jetliners like the one that cartwheeled and vaporized over a Pennsylvania farm field. My family and I tried all day to reach Dad, were finally relieved to learn he was unharmed. My loved ones were inconvenienced by 9/11, and their safe return enables me to feel a level of empathy for those who did lose loved ones that day. For several hours, that possibility had been ours. 9/11 refreshed a public component in our sense of empathy: caring for the plight of strangers is not a bizarre thing to do.

Empathy being a vital part of public grief

There are diverse attitudes about 9/11, one being that only New Yorkers have any right to mourn it, since the attack epicenter was in their neck of the woods (hello! Pentagon on line one). Another deplored our day of "grief porn," that a nationwide mourning of 9/11 is somehow maudlin and self-indulgent.

Neither works. Far more than American lives were lost that day, and far more than American lives were in jeopardy during the hours of uncertainty that followed. More than 90 countries lost people in the attacks. 9/11 was a global event that happened on American soil.

Our nation, among these 90 others, experienced butchery on a massive scale, and for a while we engaged in an unprecedented sense of community and compassion. Then it devolved to polarized discourse, fingerpointing, spitefulness, and all levels of social, political, and emotional violence. The same Congressional chamber that saw Americans rising to their feet to applaud the widows of Flight 93's "Let's Roll" heroes also saw, years later, Congressman Joe Wilson screaming "You lie!" to a newly elected POTUS. 

Today incivility characterizes our most ordinary dealings with one another, from Little League ballfields and mall parking lots, to workplaces and groceries. 

And yet when we applauded the Flight 93 widows, nobody stopped to ask if their dead husbands had been liberals or conservatives.

The role of public grief

So ... back to the role and value of public grief (that it's public only means it's widespread, not histrionic) —

Grief enables the living to try and understand (if not accept) the breadth and depth of their bereavement. It helps us to reflect on those lost, and what they mean to us. It gives us an opportunity to honor memories, whether one does that by laughing over anecdotes, burning incense in a place of worship, making a pencil rubbing off an engraved memorial, or buying a tacky souvenir from the 9/11 museum shop.

The more abrupt and violent the loss, the more unpredictable the grieving process. To those who have lost a great deal in the cruelest manner, a day of public grief gives the rest of us a chance to stand with them, to offer care and support, even if they are strangers. That's being humane, not "pornographic."

Self-ordained for what?

As a culture, this nation has gotten good at self-ordination based on sentiment versus fact. We're skilled at identifying how we're entitled. Some of it's been to the positive, and some has been gasbag punditry and blatant hatemongering. 

Over a decade later, despite the violence that was done to us on 9/11, we've become a more violent nation. And we've yet to find the common ground we share with other nations much less among ourselves: currently we're more invested in being morally triumphant than in finding unprecedented solutions. And we'll get no closer to finding common ground by telling others their most heartfelt emotions — such as grief — have no place in public discourse (Sandy Hook parents). 

Lively debate is one thing, but to believe you can make someone else change their moral vision is a presumption of correctness that's wrong for the times in which we live. Don't forget, it was moral intractability that drove the terrorists to act as they did.


So what?

9/11, as it turns out, didn't bring us closer to agree but to disagree. Its consequence was — and remains — our greatest opportunity, because in disagreement we find new ideas, even fresh collaborations. The same convictions that got us here won't be the thinking we need to get us out — and over — to better solutions. 9/11 awakened those who'd been spiritually dormant, and galvanized those already engaged in social justice and geopolitical accords.

Twilight's last gleaming? If we can't do compassion, can we at least try civility?