You are not alone in feeling the stress even though she has a range of schools. There are so many worries besides where they will get in. My big one is whether my D will be happy at the school she ends up at. If you are like me, you’re worried that somehow you’re going to make a mistake in guiding your child. The reality is that most kids do fine wherever they end up. The only advice I have for you is to talk about what’s bothering you, rather than bottle it up and also set time aside to do something fun and distracting that has nothing to do with colleges. Hang in there.
Analyze the cause of your anxiety.
- If your anxiety is that your child will be disappointed or hard on herself if she does not get into her top choices:
Start changing the narrative. Make sure that your child knows that it is she, and not her college, that will determine how much she learns in college, how much fun she has in college, and how successful she is in life. She should know that you are behind her no matter what, and that if a college is not smart enough to admit her, it is the college’s loss, not hers.
- If you are anxious that your child will not get in anywhere: Make sure your child picks some obvious safeties. And getting into early action or rolling admissions safety schools removes a lot of anxiety.
- If you are anxious your child will not get into a school you think worthy of them:
Put things into perspective in your own mind. Which college your child attends will not make or break your child’s college experience or success in life. Reread the top paragraph in my post, and convince yourself of this truth as well!
- If you are anxious about your child leaving home:
You will be amazed how much growth your child will make during senior year. My own kid had never really spent time away from us and was less independent at age 15 than some other kids. In his junior year, I wondered how the transition to college would go. But he became a lot more independent during his senior year. (Driving helped!) And by college, he was ready.
And you and your child can decide what is a comfortable amount of contact once she is away at school. With modern technology, communication is easy. Ours FaceTimes us almost every day, often for about an hour. He is happy at college, and that makes us feel great, even though we miss having him around the house.
Good luck to you and your daughter.
(Oldest kid is now a college senior. I’m here for my younger 2, now 11th and 9th grade). A counter-intuitive suggestion perhaps given where we are, but if you can manage to stay off of College Confidential in late March (or at least, minimize your time here) I’d recommend it. Come back once she has all of her decisions in hand for the threads on ‘this one vs that one’ which are very helpful if she is on the fence, but it’s really easy to get caught up in the craziness of everyone waiting for x school’s results that OMG THEY ARE COMING OUT AT 4pm TODAY!!! and OMG IT"S 4:06pm and tHEY ARE"T UP YET!!! and rinse and repeat daily. And then the threads that are labeled “Help! I didn’t get in anywhere!!” and it turns out they actually did get into their safety, just none of their extremely high reaches and didn’t have anything in between and are totally baffled that Yale didn’t want them.
I did not relax until I dropped my daughters off at college. The whole year plus of getting ready was so stressful.
For my oldest, the thing I wanted most for him was to be at a school where there were lots of kids smarter than him, which really meant one of his reach colleges. So I never got completely over the anxiety, but he got into a good engineering school before Thanksgiving thanks to a priority application, which at least reduced the level.
I’m laughing at @washugrad 's post. I would never have known that Caltech had sent the acceptances priority mail and the rejections regular mail. So I knew for almost a week that ds was probably rejected. Don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing!
The anxiety for my 2 kids largely dissipated when EA decisions came in December. Both my kids were fortunate to get into good EA options were able to relax and really enjoy the balance of their senior year. My D18 actually started joining new clubs and trying new activities when the weight of college application season was over. And I agree with others that it is wise for parents to enjoy your time with the kids senior year. It all goes so fast and then they are gone.
Glad to know I’m not the only one, but it doesn’t make the unknown any easier. Enjoying the final year as much as possible and knowing that everything will work itself out in the end is getting me through.
We are still hopeful to receive some EA decisions prior to the holidays.
Try to have the right expectations. Expect them to not get in to all of their top choices. This is where having a good list (for them) comes in. As long as they get in to a school they really like everything is great. Make sure you have safeties that they really like and would be happy to attend. Then everything else is pretty easy.
S was keenly focused on one school. It didn’t work out and he was very disappointed. But he was accepted into several peer schools that also made the great fit list and the rest is history. He was incredibly happy his very first day and remains so three semesters into his experience.