The College Application Process: A Parent's Checklist

The Education Conservancy developed this handy list of guidelines for parents:

• Recognize that gaining admission to college is merely one step in a process of education that will include your student attending a college where she or he can maximize talents and growth. Emphasize the education.
• Resist doing for your students what they are capable of doing for themselves.
• Allow your child to take responsibility for his or her own part of the college application process. Be involved in the process, but do not try to control it.
• Resist relying on rankings and college selectivity to determine the most suitable colleges for your child.
• Realize that researching, selecting, and applying to colleges does not have to be an expensive process.
• Resist attempts to turn the process into a status competition. Develop a healthy, educationally based, and family-appropriate approach to college admissions.
• Consider that gaming the system may not only diminish your child's self-confidence, it may also jeopardize desired admission outcomes.
• Listen to, encourage, and believe in your child. Do not use the term "we" as in "we are applying to…"
• Discuss the idea of education as an ongoing process, and how selecting a college might be different from buying a product.
• Love them enough to let them demonstrate the independence you have instilled in them.
• Keep this process in perspective. Remember that student skills, self-confidence, curiosity, and desire to learn are some of the most important ingredients in a quality education and successful college admissions. Do not sacrifice these by overemphasizing getting into the "best" college.