I know some otherwise very dependable people who assume this is a mostly automatic process. They treat choosing a college the way most people treat choosing a television/car/shoes - brief research, apply, buy. Very few go into any depth about this.
I’ve also been asked for advice in the real world. The problem with me was I initially expected each advice seeker to have a similar level of engagement/interest that I had. What I have discovered is none do. They either have a very narrow range of schools they target, a very tiny geographic range, and/or they are unwilling to do any research or change any pre-conceived ideas about the process.
It’s almost like students/families are kicking-the-tires when they ask for advice. They want random information, but don’t want to do anything besides talk and look. In the end, it seems they choose whatever option I would have predicted without my being involved. And I think that’s usually a great option, but getting there didn’t require my involvement, my time, my energy.
Today, I’m very particular about whom I advise. I listen to everyone. I give generic small-talk advice to many. Very rarely do I get in depth with a student/family. Some recent “help me” episodes were …
1: High Stats kid whose mother thought should go to a T40, though she had no idea which schools were in the T40 outside of Ivies. And after talking to her son, I realized he had absolutely no interest in going out of state. He’d already decided on his favorite, I knew he was likely to be admitted, and I restricted my advice. He was admitted to his top choice and started a couple of weeks ago.
2: Good Stats kid whose father talked to me early in the process. After acceptances were out, I realized he ignored everything I said and that they had applied to the usual batch of in-state publics, along with a couple of neighboring state publics. Predictably, the daughter wanted to attend the OOS public to “go somewhere different.” No matter that the OOS public was a shorter drive from home than her top option in-state. In state would have been $5K/yr out of pocket thanks to grandparent help; OOS would have meant loans of $25K/yr for my friend. I told the father bluntly and repeatedly that he would be a fool to do it. Fortunately, he told his daughter the OOS public was no longer an option. One month in, she’s happy at her in-state public - but I wish I had saved myself the time I spent working out a target list of private university options that might have been financially feasible for this softball daughter.
The only train wrecks that really bother me are the low-income kids whose parents don’t encourage to pursue college because they assume there’s no money to help them. I see too many very capable kids go straight into the unskilled workforce.
Or the train wrecks where a student has to work a job as a college student, but gets sucked into the trap of working too many hours and eventually drops out. That breaks my heart.
Parents go on and on about how hard it is for kids to launch these days… um, duh, you let your kid accumulate 200k in debt you expect him to pay for.