“Where was this resource when I was young? I wish someone had handed me a copy when I was seventeen. It could have saved me, literally, years of floundering and untold dollars spent. It would have provided awareness and confirmation of my deepest dreams at a crucial time of development.”

Lynne Hadley
M.Ed., business and life coach for 20 years
Lifeworks Coaching and Consulting
www.lynnehadley.com

Is Your Teen Ready For College?

How to find out and what to do if it’s just not the right time

Too many students are heading to college on auto-pilot without having thought about what they want to do with their lives. If they haven’t discovered their passion before they go, they may waste years of aimless wandering from major to major, thousands of tuition dollars, and risk dropout.

Here are five questions that you can use to determine whether or not your grad is ready to start college, and what you can do about it if it’s just not the right time.

Question #1. Are they totally burnt out from high school or the college application process?
With college prep classes, college applications and visits, sports, clubs, and volunteer work, high school graduates can be really burned out by the time they start college. Starting up school right away the next fall may be a recipe for disaster, as 30% of college freshman don’t return their sophomore year. In the midst of all the stress of finishing high school in the top of your class, how are young people supposed to figure out who they are and what they want to study and pursue for a career?

Question #2. Do they know what they want to study?
80% of college-bound students don’t have a clue what they want to major in. 40% take 6 years to complete a bachelors degree usually because they change majors multiple times and have to extend their studies. This could mean your child graduates with an additional 50K in student loans, which is wasted time and wasted money (maybe your money).

Question #3. Do they have any idea how they want to make a living?
Unless your child has tapped into their vision for a career early, they may not have a strong idea of how they want to make a living. They may also be using very superficial standards for determining their future career. We had a recent conversation with someone who had visions of becoming an innkeeper after watching the Gilmore Girls. How much do they know about the potential career? Have they read a few books about the subject? Have they talked to at least five people who are in the career? Have they interned or volunteered in an environment similar to their career interest? Have they talked to students who study this to find out what the classes are like and what kind of job they can expect to get right out of school? Have they identified the kind of lifestyle they want and the income they need to support this lifestyle? These are all things we would recommend talking about and actively planning before making this decision. The more information, the more informed their decision will be.

Question #4. Is there something else they really want to do?
If their friends are going on a backpacking trip through Europe and they have spent their senior year dreaming of this trip, they may not be able to truly get the most out of their studies because they really don’t want to be at school. Give them some time to get it out of their system. Otherwise they may waste that first year of college anyway – partying, rebelling, or dropping out.

Question #5. Does their passion even require that they go to college?
We know a parent whose kid is gifted in surfing and is competing in world-class championships in Panama. He is following his passion, but she wants to pull him from his passion and plop him in college, which he is really not into. We would encourage you to let your child’s passion lead him or her. There are millions of jobs that relate to a passion such as surfing and a student’s life could be shaped around their dream hobby. Some of our most famous celebrities and billionaire business men never completed a college degree.

What to do about it if it’s just not the right time?

Here are some ideas, maybe you haven't considered:

1. Defer enrollment for a year. More and more schools are allowing for this. If you know ahead of time that you may want to defer, check into the school’s policies early before you apply to save the application fee and the time on a school that won’t let you defer.

2. Help your kids discover their mission and vision for the future, their education, and their career. In Where’s the Map? we like to start with an exercise to figure out a student’s values and form mission statements, eventually getting more and more focused into a specific vision for their education and career. Don’t let your kids go to college without a mission and vision for their education. A bank would never let a business borrow 20K without a business plan!

3. Design a gap year. Ask them if they had a year to do anything, what would they do? If you kid really doesn’t know, there are some great companies that can help them design a gap year that will be shaped around their interests and prompt their desire to learn more.

4. Don’t worry and be patient. Parents worry that if a student steps off the usual track of high school to college that they will lose momentum and never go back. But the experts report that this is not the case- the majority of students who take time off return to college refreshed and excited to learn.