College Planning

Transitional Stress Part II

This week’s blog discusses the remaining five stages of transitional stress that the college bound student could encounter. At this time of the year, everyone in the family feels a lot of stress, especially the graduating senior.  Families can stay connected and remember that there are ups and downs that accompany every new experience. The following stages will discuss learning to cope and finally putting all the pieces of the college puzzle together or at least putting you on the right path.

Stage 6 — "The Grass is Always Greener…”: About midway through the first year many freshmen may begin to think that all their problems with their school could be easily solved by transferring to another school. This feeling can be particularly strong among students who were undecided until the last minute about which college to choose. Students who decide to transfer should understand that they might lose priority for course assignments, campus housing and financial aid. Many colleges will not even consider mid-year freshmen transfers. I always encourage new students to stick with their school for at least one full year; what may seem insurmountable problems at the start of the year are often drastically reduced or disappear completely by the end of the year.

 Stage 7 — “You Can’t Go Home Again…”: Students who go away to college and suffer with homesickness often long to return to the familiarity and security of home and they may find themselves counting the days until they can go back. The long awaited trip may, however, turn out to be traumatic or disappointing because things are likely to have changed. The most noticeable changes may be the encroachment of a younger sibling on the student’s position in the family or the conversion of the student’s space into an office, guest room, or other sibling’s room.

 After only a few days at home many freshmen come to realize that it is they who have changed more than things at home. And with that realization often comes a desire to return to campus–the very place they couldn’t wait to leave!

 Stage 8 – Learning to Cope: After six weeks or so on campus, freshmen can find their way to the library, have real conversations with their roommates, and are expanding their circle of friends. New students at first tend to find one or two people with whom they feel comfortable and tend to stick close to them without going out of their way to make additional contacts. But as their confidence builds so does the desire to meet more people. During this stage freshmen begin to enjoy their classes, engage in campus activities and are, in general, willing to participate in a greater number of campus activities. E-mail makes coping much easier for both the student and their family.

 Stage 9 — Fear of Failure: Midterm papers and exams can cause considerable stress as freshmen begin to fully appreciate the amount of work that must be done. Students involved in the sciences and math may experience such stress earlier in the term as those subject areas commonly give frequent quizzes rather than a single midterm exam. The best way to cope with a fear of failure is to make sure course preparation is thorough.

 Stage 10 — Putting It All Together: By the middle of the second term, most freshmen find that facets of their campus life will have meshed into a well-integrated lifestyle. Students begin to see college as ‘whole cloth’ rather than a collection of experience ‘patches.’ Once this happens they are in a better position to make decisions about all areas of college life. They are now working from a position of confidence rather than the tentative posture of the inexperienced new student they once were.

Remember to allow for mistakes, parents and the college bound student must realize that mistakes will be made along the way. These mistakes are called life experiences and they teach us a multitude of things. When we are able to learn from our mistakes, we are better for it. In the case of a college freshman, it will help.

Transition Stress

For those sending a child to college in September 2011, it is now time to turn your attention beyond your child’s acceptance letter to the jitters of preparing for the first year college experience. I have spent the last 26 years working with families, and it has been through this experience that I have come to identify the 10 stages of transitional stress that families encounter between May and December of their college bound year. I call it the “Graduation Leap,” and it takes your child across the chasm from the shores of childhood to the brink of adulthood. Since there is a lot of important information on this topic, it will be continued for the next few weeks. In this blog, I will outline the first five stages. In the following weeks, I will continue to discuss the remaining stages and how to employ good preparation and coping skills when dealing with transitional stress.

Stage 1 — Separation Anxiety: The weeks surrounding your child’s graduation may be filled with a heady blend of satisfaction and nostalgia. Romantic attachments may intensify, particularly if separation is imminent. The air around your child is charged with the electricity of unknown changes to come.

Stage 2 — Special Attention: As the summer winds down your child will become more aware that they are really going to college. Some kids manage to block the reality of their impending departure until they start packing. It is at this point that they begin to acknowledge

The approaching separation from family and friends, as well as the comfort of the support system of the high school environment.  Reassurance from you will help them understand that they have their family’s support and love regardless of the outcome of their college experience. Lessening the pressure for them, or at least recognizing and understanding it, makes their success in college much more likely.

Stage 3 — “Getting to Know You”: The freshman academic program may also generate severe stress. The courses a student takes in this all-important first term have a strong influence on how their first year goes; students should avoid taking too many courses or enrolling in courses that are too advanced, either of which can make a first-term freshman miserable and discouraged.

 Stage 4 — “The Honeymoon”: Freshmen arrive on campus with a myriad of expectations influenced by such films as “Animal House” and “Revenge of the Nerds.” Perhaps the strongest influence comes through carefully choreographed admission recruitment weekends that draw your child into a heightened sense of excitement and euphoria by making them feel as if they are part of campus life while not experiencing actual day-to-day living conditions. They are ready to be enthralled by everything they see, which is good because there are indeed wonderful things to see and experience, although some students may feel they are not happening fast enough.

 The Honeymoon stage is also a time when many students experiment with or extend their

experience with alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and/or sexual activity. Campus life presents them with more opportunities to do so with two additional factors: they are not under the watchful eye of their parents, and they are influenced by older college students and more experienced peers.

 Stage 5 — “The Honeymoon’s Over”: As freshmen settle into campus life the realization dawns that much of college consists of hard work coupled with some frustration and disappointment. Nothing, however, will prepare a freshman for the shock of those first papers and quiz grades because they are almost always respectively tougher and lower than what a student was used to in high school. This can be particularly difficult for students who ‘coasted’ through high school, and some may encounter unexpected hardships during this stage.

 In next week’s blog, I will discuss the final five stages and how to best deal with transitional stress. The moral of this blog is “forewarned is forewarned.”

The Dangers of Awarding Merit Scholarships

The awarding of merit scholarships is a dangerous practice for colleges and universities in other ways. For most colleges and universities, student financial aid is the fastest growing expense item. Each year, more colleges are less able to provide full financial aid support for all admitted students who are needy. Awarding merit scholarships exacerbates these problems. 

Some higher education officials argue that merit scholarships and so-called need-based scholarships come from different pots of funds. The truth is that for the vast majority of institutions, a dollar spent on merit scholarships is a dollar that otherwise could be invested in support of the economically deserving student. I have no doubt that awarding merit scholarships to students who aren’t needy is a major factor in rising tuitions, a chicken and egg scenario.

 Others in academia suggest that if scholarships based on athletic prowess are appropriate, surely scholarships based upon academic prowess are more appropriate, I think not. The system of college athletic scholarships is hardly one that we can be proud of; given widespread misuse and abuse and the dismal rate at which athletic scholarship winners earn degrees, the system provides no useful model.

 This form of tuition discounting, not based on financial need, but on SAT scores, is overpoweringly seductive to colleges that are seeking to upgrade the academic prowess of its student body and that in the absence of such discounting, there would be an unenrollment of student with high SAT scores. If in the long term, competition requires all colleges to “buy” their best students with merit scholarships, higher education’s already formidable financial challenges may become overwhelming, particularly for the less well-endowed and under enrolled institution. 

How will administrators and governing boards respond to the chorus of criticism about excessive tuition increases, particularly when critics figure out that a major impetus for these increases is the subsidy inherent in merit scholarship programs? How effective will the pleas to legislators be for more generous funding of need-based scholarships when they realize that colleges are using their own resources to attract students who do not qualify for them?

 The growing practice of granting merit scholarships is destructive to the country’s higher education system, and will, in the long run, reduce access for academically able but financially disadvantaged students. The nation can ill afford these social costs.

Perspective on Scholarships

This nation has a long tradition of providing access to higher education to students who are academically qualified. Financial aid in the form of scholarships has been essential in assuring that access.

 Three decades ago, scholarship funds came largely from the federal and state governments. In the last 10 years, colleges and universities, both private and public, have “recycled” their own tuition dollars into financial aid in what some have called a high-tuition/high-aid policy.

 Such a policy can make good sense for the individual institution and for society. At both public and private institutions with reasonable endowments, tuition revenue covers less than the full cost of education. In effect, even a full-pay student receives a scholarship equivalent to the difference between the per-student cost of education and tuition. The belief that wealthier families should receive less of a subsidy so that greater subsidies can be provided to needy students is both fair and consistent with higher education’s strong commitment to broad access.

This fairness principle is achieved only if the financial aid is based on need. In the last few years, an increasing number of colleges and universities have commenced what strikes me as both unfair and a dangerous practice: using financial aid to attract the more academically qualified students, including many from affluent families who can well afford the tuition. These awards are called “merit scholarships”. 

Tuition discounts vary widely as colleges strive to increase their enrollments and thereby increase their marginal revenue. A college may adjust tuition discounts based on the perceived desirability of the student. The applicant with a 4.0 high school GPA or the student body president, can hold out for a larger discount on tuition than the applicant with a 3.5 GPA or the high school yearbook editor.

 The most academically competitive colleges and universities resist this move to tuition discounting. They operate at full capacity. The teaching enterprise and student services would surely suffer if funds were shifted from them to finance merit scholarships.

 In next week’s blog, I will discuss the awarding of merit scholarships and how this can be a  dangerous practice for colleges and universities.