So after over a year of narrowing down schools and working on apps, after two trips on my part to rural Missouri to help him (including a fall down the stairs that resulted in a broken nose and broken wrist for me), after paying for him to come to CA to visit colleges, paying for his SAT prep course and raising funds among family members to send him to accepted students days, my nephew has cold feet about going away. At least, I think this is what it is. He enjoyed the accepted student days (and had a “great” time at Franklin and Marshall). We confined our search to colleges to about 14 that met 100% of financial need and he was accepted to six (wait listed for four) so he can go with very minimal loans-between 4k and 6k a year and the rest is grants.
He has been increasingly nervous and wanted to have his decision made by April 25. He couldn’t commit by yesterday and I told his mom it’s fine, he has a few more days. But when I texted him to see how he was, he indicated that he wasn’t excited about any of his choices, that they all want him to take out a ton of loans (not true) and said “I don’t even know what I want to do when I grow up.”
Now, I know this isn’t my child, but I was entrusted to help him with this process. And I know it’s not about me or my feelings or about what I did to help him. But I’m worried that he’s going to not commit to any and will be stuck in his hometown hanging out with friends his mom says are not good for him. His whole life he has told me he wanted to leave rural MO. I don’t really understand what’s going on.
Any advice would be appreciated!
Also, he was waitlisted at Washington and Lee which he now claims is his first choice, although when he sent an email after he visited to the admissions counselor he refused to tell her it was his first choice because at the time he wasn’t sure. So, he is pining after one school while he has six great options in front of him…
Tell him you are paying the deposit to keep the option open, so where should you send it. That’s the priority now. Then you may need to see where he is on this in earlyJuly. If you go in person, stay out of the ER!
If you can get him to join the FB page for the school and figure out how to do any of the optional fun orientation activities, that would help. I do understand how this could feel overwhelming to him, so anything that creates an easier entry should be encouraged.
It’s possible that the end of high school is just unnerving him. A high school principal told me that every year, there were a couple of kids who did not finish their apps because the prospect of leaving home and the community was too daunting. This often changes as everyone either starts heading off to school or work because what they were worried about leaving no longer exists.
F&M, btw, has a reputation for being a very kind place, so it sounds like he is good at picking up the vibe.
I agree that your tact should be to let him know that he needs to select one to hold his place, so that he can have the option of college remain open for 2017/18. He can also remain on the wait list and see what happens thee.
I also agree that he’ll probably feel differently about it after graduation.
Remember that if he’s the only one in his peer group that’s going away (sounds in large part due to your personal and your family’s heroics), he’s certain to have pause at being the outlier.
Note too that whichever school he does choose, he’ll likely experience a bout of buyers remorse and wish he’d chosen another, since he’s convinced himself that he has been shut out of his real 1st choice option. That too will require some finessing, but it is possible to get past it with another visit or outreach from current students.
Any pre-orientation activities - trips or on campus groups - that he can participate in will be worth any additional money spent. Of course he should participate in any and all of the orientation activities set up during the summer or at move-in.
@gardenstategal Thanks for the advice! We (my nephew, his mom, my husband-who is his mom’s brother- and I) are having a conference call tonight and we will tell him we are sending the deposit and he gets to decide where to send it. I just did not see this coming. He has always seemed so confident and sure of himself.
@hop thanks! I was thinking about buyers remorse, too and worried it will be worse if we push him to make a decision. But he has to keep one door open! I can’t imagine his regret if he lets the decision day pass and doesn’t commit.
It is a huge transition and he is venturing off alone outside of his comfort zone. Will he be first generation to go to college? Do any of the colleges have special orientation programs or advising for that population?
Tell him that courage is doing the hard thing even when there is an easy way out. Can you spin this in such a way as to build his ego?
Sorry to hear about your fall! Hope you are recovering well.
I think it is normal to have some jitters and apprehensions about such a big step in life - leaving home, a different environment where many of the students might be different from what he has experienced at home. Tell him that most people wind up regretting the choices they didn’t make, not the ones they did. He doesn’t want to look back on life and think “What if?” if he decides not to go.
“I don’t even know what I want to do when I grow up.”
That’s what college is for. Exploring new options, many of which aren’t available in high school or with just a HS diploma. It’s about as opening as many doors as possible.
“If you can get him to join the FB page for the school”
Might help. Might not. My kids found FB class pages a little unsettling because the few dozen that dominated the page weren’t their type of kid. They wound up disconnecting as they preferred to make friends organically IRL.
Are you sure? I’m not saying this to be snarky, but because you started off your post with a long list of all the things that you did to try to help him go to college.
If he’s from rural Missouri and it’s not common for people from his family or community to go to college, or to go away to college, it is incredibly normal that he is nervous about this. He has absolutely no mental model for what it is like to go away to college, and suddenly he’s expected to leave everything he knows behind and is expected to be excited about it. I was a first-generation student myself. All of the excitement and lore and stories that other kids have about college in their heads doesn’t exist for first-generation students, so it’s much more normal for them to be terrified. But everyone’s expecting him to be excited, so many students swallow it until it explodes.
Even if he’s not first-generation…this is still a kid who is being asked to move away from everything dear and familiar to him and start a new life. That is scary! Dreaming about moving away and actually doing it are two completely different things.
Bugging him to commit now is only going to ignore the root cause of the problem. Why not have a warm phone conversation with him where he can pour out his fears? Tell him it’s okay for him to be nervous and uncertain, even about where he wants to go to college. Let him get out all of his nerves and mull over the choices and do a bit of hand-wringing, and be there to reassure him. High school seniors are still kids. They need that support and warmth and love to know that they can fly the nest and still have support and know that they don’t have to make all of the big life decisions on their own.
You’ve got four more days. That’s plenty of time for him to decide on a school when he’s already got 6 choices.
@julliet thank you for your response. I will admit I am feeling disappointed. I know he can’t help how he feels but of course I wanted him to maintain his excitement. He’s not first gen- his mom moved from CA to go to college in Missouri. But he has lived in a very close-knit community and has grown up with the same kids from birth to now. So I get it’s incredibly hard. And I’ve backed off- I told him I don’t want him making a decision based on where his mom or i think he should go. And that’s true. But I do want him to go somewhere.
But you’ve given me something to think about. Maybe I’ll tell his mom we should put off the conference call and I’ll call and see if he’ll talk to me tonight.
Be careful not to say anything that would in any way give him the impression that the adults feel college is going to take him out of his crummy area and away from his loser friends. He has good memories there and he likes his friends. That needs to be respected.
I like what Juillet said about lacking the mental model for what the next step will be. it is a big step into the unknown.
@“Snowball City” I agree. He has had good memories and good friends. And of course moving to a new state is venturing into the great unknown.
I wonder if you (or his mom) could work into a conversation with him what his first few months wherever he goes will look like. “Your mom/whoever will help you move in. It’s about a X hour drive. Then parents’ weekend is about a month later, and about 6 weeks after that will be fall break.”
Perhaps breaking it down into manageable chunks of time and sketching out what it would be like would help him get his mind around “leaving.”
@Emsmom1 , I wholeheartedly agree with @juillet about being supportive and especially about listening since his stance is so baffling to all of you. And depending on what he says, @gnocciib’s coping tactic could be helpful.
What might be useful, given that the clock is ticking, would be figuring out what is involved in taking a gap year at each of the 6 schools. This was probably not in the plans but is certainly a better Plan B than just letting all the offers expire.
So as an amendment to what i said above, i would prioritize making sure at least one college is an option, even if it is a year off.
@gardenstategal I had not thought of a gap year. That is a good idea. We will do a little research on the stance of each school
For a gap year, you would need to verify that all aid is deferrable. Not all colleges are willing to do that.
Update- he and his mom called me. He said he had thought about it and has decided to go to Franklin and Marshall, no gap year. Relieved he decided without pushing and no need for a co
Oops- no need for a conference call
woohoo!
Great news. All the best to your nephew!