How can parents support college preparation without doing the preparation for their children? Jay Matthews shares these tips.
- Do focus on just a few extracurricular activities. Two is fine. The idea is to take their interests to the next level. So if your child writes poetry, help her get it published in a local journal. If he bakes pies, make sure he enters the county fair.
- Do save time for fun. The demands of high school can drive both parents and students crazy. Have a regular weekly family movie, miniature golf game or fast food night out.
- Do focus on improvement, not grade point average. Kids have different academic motivations and skills. The idea is to show them that if they keep working on something, they will get better.
- Do take the most difficult courses. Colleges prefer to see average grades in hard courses, rather than top grades in easy ones.
- Don’t worry about whether the teacher likes your child. Some of the best teachers come on strong,and appear to be ogres. Those are the ones you’ll probably bless later when your child learns how to handle a college workload.
- Don’t be a grade grubber. Grades are important, to be sure, but good academic work, even if not given full credit, will mean better SAT or ACT scores and better lifelong skills.
- Don’t spend a lot of money to prepare for the SAT or ACT. Those tests are important, but a prep course is not going to help as much as you think. Going over the sample test books works just as well. If only you can persuade your child of this. If not, you may have to pay just to preserve her peace of mind.
- Don’t do your child’s homework for him. Discussing assignments is fine. Making suggestions is okay. But a good rule is, never touch the actual paper.
Jay Matthews reports on education for The Washington Post. He's also a dad who has lived through the college application process with his own children.