As readers of this book you may be joining the College Conversation at different points in your child’s development. But our particular focus here will be for parents of children currently in middle school or high school. If your oldest child is still in elementary school, our strong counsel is to let them enjoy being children—exploring their academic interests and having fun—as you gain insight into their emerging learning styles.
For those of you whose children are in middle school—typically grades six through eight—we believe that these years are far too early in a child’s development to be visiting colleges, and we can assure you that no college admissions officer is going to be dipping into your child’s middle school record as part of an admission decision. But the course selection that you and your child make in the middle school years can impact later academic choices. For example, a pre-algebra course in eighth grade can serve as a foundation for more advanced math classes in high school. You as a parent also have to balance whatever advice you do offer with your knowledge of your child and the importance of not pushing them too hard too early.
The same is true of extracurricular activities. As children approach their early teens, these should be a source of enjoyment, as well as enhancing their physical fitness and well-being. Let them explore a wide range of activities that might help them discover what they like and who they are. Middle school parents should not be looking ahead to senior year of high school, when their children will be dutifully listing their many extracurricular activities in their college applications. At a certain point during the transition from middle school to high school, their sampling may come to an end and their interests into sharper focus, as their lives become more complicated and busy with the demands of high school and adolescence. At this point they’re going to need you to provide some guidance and structure to help inform their decisions regarding those activities on which they might focus.
Middle school is also a time in children’s lives when they begin to develop the habits and pursuits that can serve them well in their high school and college years. Here we are talking about the child who makes a habit of reading for pleasure at night or whose interest in something like baseball box scores or the beam in gymnastics begins to cross the line to passion. Don’t push them to develop these habits and have these experiences with an end result in mind, but rather for the joy of doing so.
For those whose children are about to make the transition into ninth grade, please don’t view this moment as the firing of a starter pistol signaling a mad race to cram your child’s life with so many advanced courses, near-perfect grades, and pursuits outside the classroom that sleep becomes a rare luxury.
Now we know what you might be thinking: only a few pages ago we noted that in spring 2020 the University of Pennsylvania offered admission to only 8 percent of an applicant pool of more than 42,000, almost enough to fill Franklin Field, the school’s football stadium. Surely those teenagers fortunate enough to have been offered a space in the class shared one quality in common: perfection in every demonstrable category, having been ridden hard by parents who had somehow decoded the secret formula for acceptance.
Not even close.
Aside from the fact that there is no such formula—you are going to have to trust us both on that—this is your opportunity as a parent to set a tone that will encourage your child to value the four years of high school as its own experience, rather than as merely a means to an end. And it’s also your chance to disabuse them of the notion that there is any such thing as “perfect” when it comes to college admission. Later in this book we’ll explain that a good and effective college application is in fact a natural summation of these years, capturing lessons learned and experiences had, ideally for the sheer pleasure of those moments. If, on the other hand, you communicate to your child, however indirectly, that you view high school as one giant résumé builder, you will likely set them up for two disappointments. The first: they might not get into their chosen school. But the second disappointment is far more tragic: they will have missed out on the opportunity to make their own choices, develop their own interests, and, quite possibly, enjoy the journey of learning itself.
Which is not to say that the high school years—and decisions made about courses, and how your children spend their time—aren’t critically important. But by placing those years in the proper perspective for your children at the outset, you (and they) will be in a better position to find fulfillment, while also preparing them (and you) as they set sail on one of the many routes to and through college.
To get started with the approach we offer in this book, you might divide your child’s high school experience into eight segments—basically carving each year into two parts. One reason we suggest you do so is that you, as a parent, are likely to find these shorter intervals to be more manageable, like a runner seeing a marathon not as twenty-six miles but as a sequence of stages. This framing might also help your child to view the school year not as an interminable, 180-day stretch—where a stumble or rough patch might leave them fearing they will never recover—but as a continuum of segments in which they are alternating periods of high intensity with, ideally, rest, renewal, and reflection.
As Jonathan Villafuerte, the college consultant at High Tech High in San Diego, put it to us, “You’re not going to wake up one day and say, ‘OK, I’m going to conquer the world.’ But you can wake up one day and say, ‘I’m going to conquer this day.’” He added, “And by taking small steps in the right direction, the results will be visible in the long term.”
To help you chart these cycles, while being careful not to take on your child’s workload as your own, consult a copy of your child’s high school’s academic calendar and note key dates—including exam periods, parent-teacher conferences, and breaks—on your own calendar. You may have already been doing this for years, but do so now with a different purpose: to make yourself aware of those short intervals where exertion gives way to recovery.
In the pages that follow, you may find at first that we can be a bit top-heavy with advice for parents of children who may be aiming for some of the nation’s more selective institutions of higher education. We offer this information in part to ensure that they are intentional about taking the courses that could serve to lay the foundation to preserve such options. While most of the nation’s colleges and universities don’t necessarily require that applicants take the most rigorous curriculum available at their high schools, they do expect students to challenge themselves—not only for the experience of growing and learning, but also for preparation to do college-level work. If your child is among the many who are not interested in the nation’s most selective colleges and universities, rest assured that we will soon broaden our perspective to encompass a full range of higher-education options, both four-year and two-year.
In dividing high school into eight segments, natural pauses will occur between each, including stretches of respite in the winter and summer. Avoid the temptation to overprogram your child during these periods, and instead give them space and license to decompress. We’re not endorsing indulging in extended laziness (or time on the Xbox), but we do recognize that these are also times when your children may need to work a part-time job or take care of family responsibilities.
If you are picking up this book at the outset of your child’s entry into high school, be aware of the many choices and possibilities that lie before them. At thirteen or fourteen years old, they may have already defined themselves, whether as a STEM kid interested in science, technology, engineering, or math; or an arts buff; or a jock (or found that they’re starting to be labeled as such). We hope you’ll encourage them to be open to revising or even rewriting these assumptions. At this stage, they’ll be dealing with a great deal of change in their lives, including navigating new spaces and relationships. Give them the opportunity to settle in and learn more about themselves without having to know what their next step should be.
When we talk about academic choices and possibilities, understand there is wide variance in high school offerings and resources across the nation (context that admissions officers understand and take into account in their review) and that one size most certainly does not fit all.
Some choices in high school may have already been made for your child, such as the sequence offered in math or science. For example, in mathematics, a traditional five-year sequence (perhaps beginning in middle school) might progress in the following order: algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2/trigonometry, pre-calculus, and calculus. If your child is going to be able to take some level of calculus in their senior year of high school (a necessary foundational course for engineering and business in college), then they would need to take algebra 1 in eighth grade. Otherwise your child may choose to accelerate their math studies in high school, such as by taking a summer course. In some high schools across the country, and certainly around the world, students have further accelerated into more advanced mathematics, including multivariable calculus and linear algebra. Please note, however, that the number of students embarking on such a course represents just a sliver of the universe.
In science, the traditional high school curriculum sequence is biology, chemistry, and physics, followed by an advanced level of these courses or an elective in areas like computer science or environmental science. Prospective engineering applicants might consider taking the next level of physics, not only to be a competitive applicant, but also to have the strongest foundation upon which to build later. Finally, some high schools have adopted the Physics First curriculum of the American Association of Physics Teachers, in which students enroll in a physics class in ninth grade, rather than biology. Parents whose children have access to that curriculum, and who are considering taking it, should bear in mind that critics have raised concerns that some children don’t have sufficient grounding in math to take on physics that early.
As their high school years progress, students’ options (including for taking electives) will increase. But even within the fairly proscribed ninth- and tenth-grade years, there are decisions to be made. Should, for example, a course be taken at a certain level, such as an honors or advanced?
A word of caution, and perhaps reassurance: admissions officers at highly selective institutions will often cite their preference for considering students who have taken the most rigorous curriculum available at their high school. Some students will naturally choose to max out their course choices in just this way, with a minimal level of stress. But admissions officers also recognize that many other students—perhaps a majority—who are aiming for highly selective institutions in particular will start to feel quite a bit of strain after taking perhaps three advanced courses. Indeed, there is at this very moment a backlash not only among parents and counselors but within the admissions field, recognizing that students have been pushed too hard in recent years at the expense of learning and well-being.
Which is not to say that admissions officers are advocating that your child take it easy during their high school years. Whatever courses they choose, they need to challenge themselves, put in the effort, and strive to do the best they can. Many students will opt for a high school curriculum with no advanced classes. To them (and their parents), we’ll echo a point we made in the introduction to this book: the higher-education landscape is vast, with quite literally thousands of options for a postsecondary experience that will align with a student’s interests and readiness.
For parents of children who aspire to attend one of the fifty or so most selective institutions in the nation, you might use the following as a guide for a complete high school curriculum: four years each of English, of a single foreign language (an eighth-grade class may well count toward this, perhaps the only circumstance in which a middle school course is considered), and of math and science, along with three years of history and social science. (The eight private colleges and universities of the Ivy League are actually quite explicit about these requirements on their website.) In addition, you should periodically check in with your child to ensure that across their curriculum they are honing their writing and other communication skills and that they are seeking resources and support from their teachers and other mentors (including after school) in these areas. Eric’s perspective on the importance of these skills comes, in large part, from reading thousands of submissions from seventeen- and eighteen-year-old writers each year and coming away astonished at the weaknesses in their writing. That concern is echoed by many college faculty, including in the sciences, who lament the various ways in which their students’ insufficient readiness for college writing holds them back.
As a professional writer for more than a quarter century, Jacques’s counsel to parents is fairly straightforward: for an aspiring writer, there is no substitute for practice, whether composing essays or term papers, or even writing in a daily journal that is for your child’s eyes only. He also suggests that when your child is given a range of length for a writing assignment by a teacher, they might consider aiming for the middle or upper end of that range, as opposed to the bare minimum—while avoiding padding their prose for the sheer purpose of hitting a targeted word count.
Just as your child will need to make a series of academic choices in high school, they will also need to make tough decisions about how they wish to spend their time outside the classroom. Those decisions should be guided by the experiences themselves. You might help your child frame their extracurricular activities in three categories. First are those pursuits in which they truly excel and are seen as leaders—the kid who more often than not is given the basketball with seconds on the clock, or who is assigned the lead story in the newspaper. A second category is for those endeavors they engage in for the sheer joy of participation, with no expectation that they are the go-to-person—the rank-and-file member of the chorus, as opposed to the soloist. Our final category is a bit of a catchall, encompassing those many weekly opportunities to step away for reflection and for contribution to one’s family and community. These moments could take place through local service projects, religious observance, or being able to have a family meal without distractions.
The three basic categories in our out-of-classroom rubric also happen to align with the priorities of the admissions process, including at highly selective institutions. We’ll go a bit deeper into this later, but suffice it to say that, because they are eager to build communities on their campuses, colleges want to have a sense of how your children will interact and engage with peers and faculty, as well as of the various strengths and passions they bring. Some students will be more rounded, others more specialized.
And with that, we’re going to move beyond the walls of your child’s high school as we begin the part of the College Conversation we call Discovery.