Some parents would have better luck scheduling an appointment with President Barack Obama in the next week, than they would in getting 10 minutes of “sit-down-to-talk” time with their busy high school student!
While I have been skeptical of stories where parents are now being informed that they need to start the college planning process when their student enters 8th or 9th grade, I recently had a conversation with a single mom who validated what seems to be more commonplace.
Aside from financial planning for college (a topic for another post another time…), making sure your student is planning their course-work so that it matches their talents (and even pushes them a bit outside of their comfort zone) is priority number one. Colleges want to see a student who pushes themselves to achieve as good of a GPA as possible while taking Honors and/or AP courses in addition to their core course work.
Guiding your teenager through the challenging courses in high school needs to begin early. Once a student starts down a path that is not pushing their limits, they will be reluctant to make the switch “mid-stream” to focus on AP classes. Granted, not every student will be a good fit for the more difficult math, language, social sciences, and traditional sciences. However, if students who think that earning a B+ in AP Calculus will be worse than an A+ in a standard math class… think again.
Going back to my opening statement, make sure you schedule time with your student (or have them talk to an outsider like a guidance counselor or independent counselor) to get them on the right track, sooner rather than later.
