After participating for the fifth time in a college information weekend for my children, and now that my younger daughter has completed and submitted all of her college applications, and before my son earnestly begins his college search, I must talk about the “College Fire Walk”. The college fire walk is a time for your children to walk across the hot stones that will lead them to select the college that is right for them.
FACT: You shouldn’t brainwash your child.
REALITY: Although you shouldn’t brainwash your child, brainwashing sometimes is highly effective.
I confess to buying my oldest daughter a Yale t-shirt and baseball cap before she was born. My husband bought her a set of surgeon scrubs. She eventually went to Yale. We began the official college search process for real with her during her 10th grade year. But waiting until your child is sixteen years old may be too late. I believe that a child’s educational path is laid on a foundation that you establish at birth. That foundation involves the sort of “brainwashing” that includes reading every night to your children before bed and instilling in them the love of learning when they are young. As a parent, you yourself must read books to set an example for your children. “Do as I say, but not as I do” is convenient sometimes, but has never really worked. We have a lot of books in use at our home.
Instilling that love of learning also means establishing and demonstrating good intellectual habits and routines. When your children start doing homework on a regular basis, make rules about using the TV and all other types of media while they are studying. TURN OFF the TV, Radio, Social Media (Facebook, Skype, AIM, and the like), Smart Phones, and Internet (unless they are doing an online assignment). PARENTS: YOU MUST TURN OFF ALL DISTRACTIONS AS WELL UNTIL YOUR CHILDREN FINISH ALL OF THEIR HOMEWORK.
FACT: The Ivy League was established in 1954 as an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States.
REALITY: Every child neither can, nor should, go to an Ivy League college.
Parents must understand that attending an Ivy League college neither makes a child a better person nor ensures that a child will be successful in life. An Ivy League education is great if you want your child to have a liberal arts education. But if your child is set on majoring in accounting in order to be an accountant as a career, you should not necessarily send him or her to an Ivy League college. Yale, for example, offers but one undergraduate accounting course and no major. If, however, your child is interested in Economics, then an Ivy League college may be a good place to start. If your child wants to go into investment banking, Harvard, Yale or Princeton may be a great place to begin your college search if only because investment banks come to these schools to recruit a small number of graduating Seniors from these institutions.
If your child wants to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, s/he might be just as well, if not better, off attending a “Big Ten” State College. If you want your child to be trained for a specific trade without further specific training, do not dream of an Ivy League education with a major in English or History. However, if your children have no idea of what they want to do as adults, I advise that they go to a liberal arts college and learn a lot of different things.
MYTH: An Ivy League degree guarantees a higher total income throughout one's lifetime.
REALITY: Of the top twelve self-made billionaires in the United States, only two have college degrees.
Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College. Warren Buffet attended Wharton School of Business for two years but said that he knew more than did his teachers. He graduated from the University of Nebraska with a B.S. degree and Columbia University with an M.S. degree. Apparently, he was rejected by Harvard Business School which deemed him too young when he applied.
Moreover, I know a number of Yalies who either do not have jobs or, like me, have chosen to take a path that is not highly regarded in terms of careers. Raising three children is a full-time job that is to me worth every penny of ‘lost’ income.
MYTH: You can only get a truly great education from an Ivy League college because only there do great professors teach.
REALITY: You can get a great education from a number of different colleges that are not part of the “Ivy League”. There are a number of great professors who teach at state colleges.
As a parent, your biggest job is to help your children identify their gifts, strengths and passions. You and your child need to visit potential colleges, either online or in person, to see if he or she would be better served by a university with, say, 50,000 students, or by a small rural liberal arts college, or by a medium-sized city college. You need to see if the programs of study fit with your child’s strengths and passions. Why would you send your child, who wants to major in engineering, to a college that does not offer an engineering degree? Of course, a caveat to this advice is that teenagers typically do not have a genuine sense of what they really want to do when they grow up. So make sure that they pick a school where they have options should they want to change their major. As someone at the most recent college fair put it, “College should not be a prison sentence with a four year fine of tuition”. Of course, if your child finds s/he is in a wholly unsuitable place, one can usually transfer to another college.
With respect to Ivy League schools, though, don’t force a fit with your child just because you have always dreamed that they would attend “an Ivy” or any other specific college. Remember that “Ivy League” strictly speaking refers to an athletic conference, and although the schools that make up the “Ivies” are wonderful institutions of higher learning, they are not the right “fit” for every student.
The selection of a college is a very important decision in a young adult's life and parents are an integral part of helping their child with the choice. Enjoy this special time with your children.
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