Parent influence on college choice

Hi all,
Wondering how much influence parents generally have in helping their son/daughter make a final decision on which college to attend?
My son is a senior this year. Right now, he has a list of 5-6 colleges he’s interested in applying to. We’ve visited all of them. He doesn’t have one that’s his top choice as of now. So if it comes down to a top three schools that he likes, but as a parent, I like one of those schools more and feel it’s best for his major, should we tell him that’s where he should go, or let him decide? (It’s not about money, in fact, the school I like would probably cost slightly more.)
I feel one of his choices is more highly ranked (but it’s not about prestige as all these schools are just “average” colleges), as well as being a good fit. My son likes this school but hasn’t made a decision. I know it’s early, I’m just getting opinions. Another school is a local option but I think it’s just “ok” and not the best. So who makes the final decisions? I don’t want to say but it’s our money, but it’s also not like we are forcing him to go to a school that he has no interest in.
Thanks

Are all of the colleges within the range of acceptable schools based on previously given parental criteria, including cost and quality of possible majors that he may choose?

If so, then many here would suggest letting him choose and own the decision.

We let our daughter decide. It’s her college experience, not ours. That said, there wasn’t a “bad” choice on her list but that said, I would have picked a different school if it had been my choice.

We tell our son what we think but ultimately let him decide.

Total cost being a major factor, I’d think parents should be guiding their kids towards schools they’d be able to attend if accepted.

I think there is nothing wrong with helping then see the pros and cons of their choices. For a while S2 had a consistent favorite… Which was whoever he talked to last.

In my opinion there was a clear best choice when it came down to the last 2. I never told him where to go, but I did help him go through pros and cons and look at the differences. I think it helped give him some clarity and make a better decision. If you ask him today he is glad for the advice.

You know your kid, and I think it’s very much in bounds to provide your perspective on fit and pros and cons of colleges.

I think it’s a matter of degree of influence – your sage advice can lead him to water but he has to drink (choose) himself.

Also depends on your relationship – some kids may want to go a different direction from what their parent encourages so if that’s the case beware of pushing too hard as it may backfire.

I think its helpful for the parent to assist with putting together a decision tree and/or matrix that helps clarify the decision making process. Ideally, this would include some way of ranking the key decision factors and then sorting based on that ranking. Beyond that, its up to the kid.

I was heavily involved in finding affordable options. I required they apply to the two local public schools. After that, I stayed out of it.

My son also had a hard time deciding. Visit your top 3 again, and ask to sit in on a class and visit the department of your son’s major. Meet with a professor or the department head. Also make a list of pros/cons/expenses as mentioned above. You have until May 1st.

One thing I did was place a phone call or email to admissions and financial aid with a random question to see how responsive they were. One school he was interested in did not bother to return my call or email on two occasions - that was a deal-breaker for me as a parent (it was an out-of-state school).

Our decision was really a family collaboration. We didn’t push him to decide quickly, and he wasn’t ready to commit until the end of April. He would have been fine at any of his top choices - our philosophy is college (or anything else) is what you make of it. Sometimes there isn’t a perfect fit, or if there is, how are you supposed to know that after just a visit or two? We let him know we would support him if it didn’t work out, and he can transfer closer to home next year if needed.

On the “final” decision…I took no part at all except to listen as DS worked through his choices. I had a strong favorite of his final three but I kept it to myself. Although I did react with a “Yesss!!” and a fist pump when he announced that he had selected my favorite.

If you think that one school is better for his major, then provide your son with the FACTS that support this. As @HMom16 suggested, help your kid figure out how to weigh data when making big decisions like this. Spreadsheets or plus/minus columns are simple options for this sort of thing.

Like others, I filtered/vetoed on the front end for cost factors. Also at my son’s request, I suggested schools that were “similar to X”, where X was a school he really liked.

With the first DD, I said “make a list of colleges that we can go visit” and she did. She picked a geographical distance from our house and researched schools within that. We visited most of those over Spring break junior year. I included a parent pick that has the same characteristics but was affordable at full price.

When she got the results of her applications back, there was a bimodal distribution of net costs…public State Us that were under 30K and a couple of privates over 40K. We didn’t discuss budgets per se, but at that point as she was interested in the Public Us I told her to pick whatever one she wanted in the under 30K batch as I didn’t think the others were worth it for her major, Math. We didn’t get to go to admitted students day as we were living in Germany at the time. She ended up picking my parent pick college, which was the most expensive of the publics but still very affordable. It gave the most IB Credits (SUNY Binghamton) . She did great and graduated in 2.5 years with the IB Credits and a couple of summer credits.

So for the second one, I started a little earlier. Fall break of Junior year I took her to our Big State U and an excellent State College that I thought would fit what she wanted and be affordable. She hated the big State U (you have to take busses to get around the campuses) but liked State College. I wanted her to get a feel for the type of college she might want to investigate more. Then I did the same thing. Go make your list. … in the winter of Junior year I dragged her to the library, put a Fiske guide in front of her and say look at this…At some point she said “You like to look stuff up on the internet…can you come up with a list for me.” So I used the various college search tools on naviance and here on CC and got some ideas for her. We visited them over Junior Fall break (including the State College agai for reference). For her I know she wanted to be 1-2 hours away. Summer of junior year I insisted that she came up with a draft of her Common App essay and she did. So come fall, I asked her if she wanted to think about applying ED to State College…she kept comparing everything to it and it was affordable for us full pay…and she has a terrible time making decisions and I thought this would save her from having to choose in the spring. She did apply ED, got in, and is currently a Senior at TCNJ!

So both of my kids ended up at an affordable parent pick that met their needs.

I’ve told this story before, but DD had narrowed things down to a couple D3 schools based largely on her sport. She liked both the coaches, had overnights with both the teams and felt comfortable on both campuses. But there were huge red flags. She was a top student who had expressed a lot of interest in going away for college, yet there was a very clear academic gap between them (eg almost no overlap between 25-75 ACT scores) and the poorer school was about a mile from home. Wha? Well her club coach was at the local school and she kind of wanted to stay with her.

Cut to January, and one of DD’s friends sits her down and presses for more detail. After hearing a pro and con list she said “You’ve used the word Better about nine times in the past two minutes. What are you doing? Pick the school.” Oh thank you Sonia. Not sure what we’d have done if she’d insisted on staying in town, but I’m really bad about holding my tongue so eventually it could have been a problem. Luckily her friends did the pushing and the choice was obvious.

Long story longer: both coaches left their schools by the end of her sophomore year, she’s happy and things worked out well. I’m trying to lay low on the next ones.

Once it was narrowed down to two, we let our son decide which one to attend. My husband and I would have picked one particular one, hands down, but our son struggled and struggled to make a decision and finally went with the other. He is having a great experience there, doesn’t mind that it’s in the middle of nowhere in a cold, snowy environment, so apparently he knew best. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had forced him to pick the other! I think once the choices are narrowed down to a handful that meet the basic criteria, including affordability, there is no reason it shouldn’t be a decision made by the person who will need to live and work there the next 4 years!

If I really hate one of DD’s choices, I’ll say so. However, I promised her it is ultimately going to be her choice.

DH and I are prepared to pay for her full ride with two caveats: 1. That she major in something that will “pay the bills” (not expecting wealth beyond measure here, but she can’t count on being a famous stand up comedienne either), and 2. If we don’t see the grades (which colleges no longer share with parents), she won’t see the tuition check coming from us for the next semester. Those two things are more important to us than where she actually ends up attending.

It’s a tough spot to be in. The school you may want him to go to and the school that’s best for him might be different. We “wanted” our kid to go to the Big 10 school we went to. But objectively, the best fit for him may have been a smaller MAC school. So that’s what we told him and it was up to him. He chose the Big school for “football Saturdays” and is getting eaten alive.

Within your financial boundaries, let them pick after you have had your say. If the choice doesn’t work out, your son will forever blame you if you forced it on him.

@StPaulDad we had a similar experience with S2, but I helped walk him through it a bit without telling him what to do. I didn’t trust his friends to steer him correctly.

School X is my alma mater, about a 2 hour drive away, cheaper, and for a bunch of other reasons was way better for me. And I told him that. But School Y was probably better for him, and I told him that too.

There were many factors, but I think at least a small part of the attraction to X was my connection there. I wanted him to clearly understand that I thought Y was better, and that I wouldn’t hold it against him if that was his choice. I told him I would also support him at X.

Fortunately for him (and at least in the short run sadly for me) he chose Y.

There is a way of steering them without them figuring it out. My experience is that telling them they have to go somewhere is a perfect way to get them to not want to go.

@dadof4kids I honestly liked a third school better than DD’s other two finalists, but I told her that I already went to school and couldn’t afford another go. We found it easy to step back from matters of taste or comfort.