The Great Game: Getting Your Kid into College
by Cindy Reid

College. It starts at birth, accelerates through the elementary school years and culminates in a frenzy by high school. I am speaking of your child's college, of course, and how much it looms over a parent.

In the great game of parental scorekeeping there is probably no prize greater than that of success in your child's college admission. True for all parents? Maybe not, but truer for more of us than we may be comfortable admitting. Getting your kid into a great school seems to erase a lot of previous parental mistakes. Getting your kid into a school that's a good fit (for them, not you) is an enormous accomplishment.

I am speaking from recent experience. Being the single parent of an only child, all my eggs were, so to speak, in one basket. Thoughts of her eventual college admission were there while she was growing up, but in a faraway manner, something to think about seriously later, after the bills were paid, after my career was established, after surviving as a single mother. College savings account? After the ten-year-old car was replaced, after we went to Disney World, after I changed careers again. Besides she is a very bright girl, she should be able to get a good scholarship to a good school. At least that's what I told myself when there was $5.41 in the savings account.

Then "suddenly" it was time to get serious. And how could the average high school freshman really know how serious the whole thing is? Their eyes glaze over at the one hundredth reminder that they better not slack off, don't they want to get into a good school? Do they want to end up at (fill in the name of your own least favorite fast food or convenience store or gas station)? Or worse, end up at a mind-numbing, underpaid, boring job (like yours)? Of course any sensible parent takes charge of the whole enterprise. Our children's futures are too important to leave in their own inexperienced hands!

My poor daughter. She had to hear this stuff for four years, not only from me but from any other well-meaning adult as well. Laugh at the "permanent record" at your own peril, because there really is a permanent record and it's called a transcript. I pushed her into difficult math and science classes in middle school, calculating that it would pay off later, on her transcript. I pushed her into any AP class that would accept her, for the same reason. Grades? We both came to tears over the occasional disappointing grade.

As if that wasn't bad enough, admissions offices are evidently interested in seeing spectacular after-school activities as well. That was vexing. No one in my entire extended family is blessed with an atom of athletic or musical talent. Not being a natural "joiner," and attending a small high school with limited extracurricular activities, it was a struggle to find application-worthy pursuits to nudge her into. Feed the poor? Sure, she did that at the local food pantry . . . then I would read about teenagers who were feeding the poor and building them houses in South American jungles! I couldn't help but feel that "we" were slipping here. Luckily, in a burst of uncharacteristic enthusiasm, sparked by a wonderful teacher, my daughter became involved with several school clubs and truly cool activities. I admit to being pleased equally by her altruism and relief at having something for her to put in the white space on the application.

SAT. Serious Application Thing that cannot be avoided and must be done very well. Again and again until it's done well enough. I think I really started to pity my daughter at this point. It's one thing to push a kid into the more challenging classes, and extracurricular activities are certainly valuable on their own merit, but there is no earthly reason for the SAT test except for the college application. Her eyes glazed over time again as I repeatedly hectored her how crucial this was, how important the scores were, how she would never have to do it again if she aced it the first time. Poor kid, when she really did almost ace it the first time, she was actually disappointed in her scores and shocked that I didn't make her do it again. She was at that time unaware of the SAT II subject tests. I waited a decent interval before signing her up for a few of those, for good measure.

Okay, transcript good, activities good, SAT good, and SAT II tests good. All this accomplished by a great kid who was barely seventeen, probably in spite of her overanxious (read overbearing) mother. College catalogs were overflowing our mailbox, and after the initial fun of opening every one, we both got sick of the pile and started throwing them away unopened, discarding them on the basis of geography. It was like having as much ice cream as you want — eventually you dread the sight of it. The pile of keepers was studied and winnowed down to a manageable few, campus visits were made, and interviews conducted. She dutifully tried to follow the suggested plan of applying to three schools, in order of choice, but her heart was set on only one. This was the school that doggedly stayed in the keeper pile, in spite of its geography (a little too far away) and its cost (a lot more than I could afford).

And this is where I started to get unglued over the system of early application, early decision, and early acceptance. I confess that I still don't understand this part, because each college has a different system. But I did figure out that "early" meant done. Done with the laborious process and done with driving my kid nuts. So early application it was, and I simply cannot exaggerate the nerve-racking wait for the thumbs up/down. After all the hard work and worry — 99% of the work on her part, 99% of the worry on my part — it was down to waiting for one envelope to arrive in the mail. The school said she would know by Christmas. Every day she would come home from school, check the mail, discard the holiday flyers, catalogs and cards . . . still no letter. I would sit at work watching the clock until I could not stand it and I would break down and call her, knowing full well that if "the letter" had arrived she would have called.

Well, the letter never arrived. When I simply couldn't take another day of waiting I called and spoke to the very kind admissions office. It turned out there was a snag that was easily fixed with a fax (I will let you imagine the frenzy that went into getting that fax out that night) and finally the satisfyingly bulky acceptance package that arrived a few days before Christmas. Yes, it was the best present ever, and yes, we both cried, this time with joy.

She was able to relax and enjoy the rest of school year and I was able to get back to my own life. Within the next few months I moved, changed careers and started to let go of my very mature and accomplished daughter.

It was a beautiful late summer day when I drove her to school in a rented station wagon bursting with clothes, books, small appliances and all the hopes and dreams a mother can burden her daughter with. I kept it together until I had to finally leave her dorm room and get back in the station wagon and then I cried the old fashioned sloppy way of sobs and runny nose. As many times as I had rehearsed it in my mind I was still unprepared for the pain of driving away.

As I write this it has been two months and she is doing fantastic, the school is all she had hoped for and more. And I am doing well too; I love my new job and home. Although I feel the occasional pangs of the "empty nest," that's what school breaks are supposed to take care of, at least for the parents, and I am eagerly anticipating having my beautiful college kid home for again, if only for a little while.