Imagine a friend you trust saying to you:
“I keep hearing that if bedbugs make their way into your house, it’s impossible to get rid of them. We just scheduled an expensive treatment that will protect our home. You should think about doing it, too.”
Thirty seconds ago, you didn’t have a bedbug problem. Now you do, because your friend just planted one. You care about your home and your family. And your friend seems pretty certain this is a good idea. So you’ve got to make a choice—will you take on your friend’s bedbug fear and initiate preventative measures? Or will you continue on, bedbug-deflector-shield-free? The treatment may be expensive, but so will be the regret if you pass and the critters find a way in.
It’s not an easy choice.
Friends, relatives, and neighbors unintentionally plant admissions problems all the time. Someone hires an SAT tutor for their freshman to “get an advantage,” or enrolls in an expensive summer leadership academy that supposedly guarantees an admissions boost, or takes some other admissions action in light of a troubling factoid they reportedly learned from someone else. What are you going to do now? Will you be hurting your own student’s chances of admission if you don’t follow suit? It puts good parents on a four-year red alert, eagerly engaging in every conversation about admissions just so they can be sure they don’t miss something potentially important. Those exchanges almost never result in relief or optimism.
The college admissions process may be more complicated than it was two or three decades ago. But plenty of good kids find their way to good colleges without their parents getting a PhD in the art of admissions. Be engaged in, but not obsessed with, the process. Meet regularly with your high school counselor. Read the information he or she sends out, and attend any college-related workshops your school offers. As you search for and apply to colleges, attend admissions presentations and visit college fairs. Those are productive measures not just because you’ll be engaging with people who really know what they’re talking about, but also because each interaction will leave you feeling better about your college planning, not anxious that you’re still missing something.
If the admissions process were as full of potential pitfalls, missteps, and undiscovered advantages that so many people seem to believe and share, a lot fewer kids would emerge successfully from the process. Be engaged, yes. But don’t let others consistently plant problems that you don’t have.