If you have a son or daughter starting high school this fall, here are a few past posts and resources worth checking out.
Starting points for high school freshmen
Lies people tell high school freshmen
And a shameless plug for my book, which explains everything a high school family needs to know about planning for college.
If memory serves—and I’m pretty sure it does because I consciously took a mental snapshot of the moments—my mother said the same words to both me and my younger brother when each of us said goodbye to begin our lives at our respective colleges.
“What an exciting day!”
I was starting at UC Irvine. He was starting at Harvard. The same sentiment—three years apart—from Mom.
It will be an exciting day no matter what college your student leaves to attend.
Take this pill and lose weight while you sleep!
It’s easy to be seduced by the promise of a shortcut. The best way to lose weight isn’t easy, but it’s not complicated, either. Eating right, cutting out the cookies, and going to the gym every day means developing habits and repeating them over and over again. It’s the search for the shortcut that makes it more complicated.
Lots of people look for shortcuts in college admissions—one activity, one essay topic, the one alumni recommendation or pay-to-play program or choice of major that will guarantee admission to their dream school.
But like the search for the mythical weight-loss pill, the search for the shortcut just leads to frustration. Becoming a competitive college applicant means developing good habits.
Take challenging courses. Work hard. Commit yourself to activities you care about. Find the right colleges, regardless of prestige. Present yourself clearly and honestly in the applications. These steps won’t necessarily guarantee admission to one particular school any more than doing the hard work to lose weight will guarantee that you’ll win a triathlon. But if you turn them into habits, there will be plenty of colleges waiting to reward you.
If there were shortcuts that actually worked, someone would have found and profited from them already. Take that energy you’re spending searching for the easy way and redirect it into good habits. The habits work much better than the shortcuts do.
I was planning to write a post reminding new college freshmen to say something nice and meaningful to your parents when you say goodbye to them at your new college (a simple, “Thank you so much for everything. I’ll really miss you guys” would suffice).” But then Amy in our Westport office shared this 2012 post from San Diego State University’s Facebook page. I don’t know who wrote it, but he or she said it much better than I would have. And kudos to SDSU for posting something so timely, personal, and helpful (the text is pasted below, unedited, for those without Facebook accounts).
Attention Freshmen who are moving in tomorrow: A little request … When your mom wants to unpack all of your clothes and make your bed – Let her. When your dad wants to introduce himself to all the people on your floor – Let him. When they want to take pictures of every move you make this weekend – Let them. If they embarrass you or act crazy – Let them. As you start the new chapter of your life, they are also starting the new chapter of theirs. And believe it or not, this is probably more difficult for them than it is for you. So let them treat you like their “baby” one last time.
Welcome to the Aztec family!”
Journalists are taught never to “bury the lead.” The lead is the first sentence of a story. When well-crafted, it clearly and concisely communicates the main point. A busy reader should need to read only a sentence or two to know what a story is about—everything after that is just secondary details for particularly interested readers.
Identifying and communicating your lead can also help you craft stronger college applications.
If you spend more time playing the violin than doing just about anything else, don’t bury that fact in a long list of activities.
If you write your essay about the part-time job you took after school, don’t leave out that you did so to help with your family’s finances (that would be burying by omission). That’s an important part of the story that deserves to be shared.
If you won an award that’s unique to your school, don’t bury the significance by neglecting to explain what the award actually represented.
Most admissions officers are patient and thorough readers. But you can make their jobs easier—and your case stronger—when you avoid burying your leads.
In a career that spans over two decades, Judd Apatow has written, directed, and/or produced some of the entertainment industry’s most successful comedies, including The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, This Is 40, Superbad, Bridesmaids, Anchorman, and the current hit, Trainwreck. And the introduction of his book, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy, actually has a lot of great lessons for high school students, whether or not you like Apatow’s movies.
Apatow describes how he developed an obsession with comedy at an early age, even taking a job in junior high as a dishwasher at a local comedy club. But it was in tenth grade that he started working at his high school’s radio station and pitched an idea for his own show. He called comedians’ agents or their PR people, introduced himself as “Judd Apatow from WKWZ radio on Long Island,” and asked to interview their client. He left out that he was only 15 years old.
Over the next two years, this high school student interviewed more than forty comics, TV stars, writers, directors, and even a few movie stars (one of those early interviews was a fledgling comedian in 1983 named Jerry Seinfeld whom Apatow asked, “How do you write a joke?”
As Apatow describes the experience interviewing his idols:
“This was my college education [editor’s note: Apatow later enrolled in the screenwriting program at USC]. I grilled these people until they kicked me and my enormous green AV squad tape recorder out of their homes. I asked them how to get stage time, how long it takes to find yourself as an artist, and what childhood trauma led them to want to be in comedy. I asked them about their dreams for the future and made them my dreams, too. Did I mention I never even aired most of the interviews? I put a few out there, but even then I knew this information was mainly for me—and that the broadcast part was a bit of a ruse.”
The lesson here is not that students must identify what they want to do with their lives (Apatow admits that he never became a great stand-up comedian, but later found that he was quite good at writing jokes for other people). The lesson is that likely without even knowing it, Apatow was embodying five of the most desirable traits that colleges look for in potential students:
1. Passion: Apatow wasn’t doing any of this just so he could put it on his college application. He was genuinely passionate about comedy and went to great lengths to feed that interest.
2. Initiative: Apatow didn’t wait for someone else to create this show or contact the comedians for him. He did that himself. And he proved that he’s someone who can make things happen.
3. Individuality: How many other students do you think could say that they’d done what Apatow did in high school?
4. Love of learning: He had an insatiable desire to learn everything about comedy, so much so that he also transcribed episodes of Saturday Night Live and made a point to watch every stand-up comedian who appeared on talk-shows. None of this would ever appear on his transcript. But he was channeling an intellectualism there that paid off in the form of an admission to college, and was likely instrumental in his success later in life.
5. Likability: It must have been impossible for a college admissions officer not to like this high school kid who had interviewed some of the biggest names in show business.
Apatow let his passion and curiosity drive him to do as much as he could with something that really interested him. Even if he had never pursued comedy after high school, those skills—cold calling, selling himself, interviewing, interacting with adults, etc.—would still have served him well…and made for a great college essay. Best of all, he didn’t do any of this as some sort of college admissions strategy. Like almost all successful applicants, Apatow wasn’t concerned with whether or not he’d ever get any literal or figurative credit for it.
If you made Apatow-like efforts with whatever interests you, how far could you go?
Some teens—and plenty of adults—withhold their best efforts until they get what they want.
If I get into the AP class, then I’ll put the effort in.
If I get a leadership position, then I’ll commit more time.
If I get a starting spot, then I’ll spend time improving my jumpshot.
If I get a solo, then I’ll practice my saxophone more often.
If I get the lead in the school play, then I’ll dedicate time to the production.
If I get a promotion, then I’ll work hard.
If I get into a prestigious college, then I’ll do what it takes to be successful.
If you’re holding out until you get what you want, you’ll spend more time waiting than doing. The path to “then” is now.
Many of the high school experiences seem incredibly important to teens today, but in reality, they will have little significance in the future. That’s why one of the most helpful gifts a parent can give your student during the college admissions process is to provide the long-term perspective.
Losing an election, sitting on the bench instead of starting for the team, not getting the part or the position or the role your student wanted—many teens will struggle to separate the gravity of their disappointment today from the likelihood that new and even better things are to come tomorrow.
Parents, here are two keys providing long-term perspective to your teens:
1. Don’t lose that perspective yourself. If you are spinning out of control about an SAT score, a B in Geometry, or one selection of another student over yours, your student won’t have a healthy example to learn from.
2. Praise efforts over outcomes. Long-term benefits rarely come from awards, titles, and recognitions. They come from the efforts that lead to those distinctions—an effort without the accompanying reward or award might feel less valuable today, but their long-term worth is equal if not greater to what the formal recognition might have been.
Students haven’t been on the planet long enough to experience the long-term benefits of their efforts and attitudes. Expect that they’ll be inherently more focused on the short-term. Then relish the opportunity to give them something only you can give: perspective.
I write often about the importance of making an impact—make yourself indispensable, someone who people would miss if you moved on. And it’s pretty clear that Jamis Buck did just that during his time at Basecamp, as his former boss, Jason Fried, writes in this Inc. article.
If you knew that your teachers, counselors, coaches, club advisors, etc. were eventually planning to write an article about your contributions, an article that would be published and read by thousands of people, would you be doing anything differently?
Seniors, if your college applications were due one week from today, how would you spend your time this week?
How much more relaxed would the rest of your process be if you pretended that the deadline was a week away and did the work now?
I’m not suggesting you should necessarily submit that work right away. College applications shouldn’t be rushed.
But, like many difficult and even scary projects, sometimes just starting is the hard part. Dive in now and you’ll have plenty of time to refine and polish later. And you’ll give yourself a chance to be that rare senior who submits perfect applications long before the deadlines.