The best advice to give when dropping your children off at college

Parents Forum
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“… The truth is that most new undergraduates are woefully unprepared for the realities of college. The college search that has consumed many of them for the past year — and in some cases, for more than a year — focused largely on where to go to college, not how they should go to college. High-school counselors prepare students to get into college, not what students should do while they are there to make the most of their undergraduate years. Even the best freshmen orientation programs often fail to provide students with an adequate road map for navigating the sometimes-treacherous path to graduation.” …

Four pieces of advice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/04/the-best-advice-to-give-when-dropping-your-children-off-at-college/

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Totall agree with engaging faculty, and I did discuss this with my college bound several times. I think this is one place where college is very different from HS.

Internships are also something kids should know about, but it escapes me how this is a “drop off at college” topic. Most students dont intern till after sophmore year, and my advice woudl be to focus on academics your first year and not try to take on other work.

Network with peers feels kinda wierd here too. I dont think most freshman have networking on their mind when they meet people first year. They are more often overcoming social anxiety.

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“Network with peers feels kinda wierd here too. I dont think most freshman have networking on their mind when they meet people first year. They are more often overcoming social anxiety.”

I think networking is important but finding a mentor is more important for a freshman IMHO.

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I agree with networking with peers as one of the things new students should do. learning from each other the ins and outs of the campus, finding out their fears/problems/dreams/hopes etc are shared. Mentors will come eventually.

I would most want new freshmen to ask for help instead of thinking they need to prove their independence by going it alone. Talking with peers makes a huge difference. Second semester is soon enough to do so many of the academic things, those first few days and weeks set up the comfort level to make more possible.

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Before D1 left, I wrote her a 10 Things to Know. Some day I’ll find it and post it. Not just engage faculty, but how to be savvy about dealing with them and other challenges. Then about the social situation, how fast impressions are made and gossip travels, when you aren’t retreating home every evening.

She took some of it, tested other aspects, but did fine. She won’t network with former college friends now, has a new network of job related peers, which benefits in its way. The first years after college, for some young adults, there’s a different sort of growth spurt.

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Why wouldn’t someone network with former college friends?

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  • Because the college friends all went off to various interests, professional or grad school. And though there's a growth spurt as they become young adults, it's at different rates. The friends from her two jobs, to-date, are more in line with how she sees her life presently and near future. This is a kid who easily interacts successfully, but what makes a college friend, those ties and shared experiences, is not always about professional networking.