How To Avoid The Pressure of May 1

Colleges want you to send in your deposit by May 1 as proof that you are going to attend. In other words, if you don’t send in your deposit, you will lose your bed and maybe a prized parking spot. The college's push for this deadline is to stop biting their own nails because April makes them nervous. Why? Because their fates are being determined by a bunch of talented 17- and 18-year-olds. And you thought colleges NEVER get nervous about anything.

What if you can’t make up your mind before May 1 which school you want to attend? That’s a lot of pressure that's being put on you by the colleges to meet their sacred deadline.

Here’s how you avoid the pressure of the May 1 deadline: make two or three non-refundable deposits by May 1 with your top 2 or 3 schools. It won't be cheap, but nothing as important as your future is.

Take the entire summer to decide which school you want to attend. Choosing the right college is a HUGE decision, and putting our kids under a deadline before their own high school graduation can be harmful to your student's future and your wallet. The "non-refundable" aspect of the deposit has a sting to it, but the sting will be greater if the school selected before the deadline turns out to be the wrong one. Ouch! Big Sting.

Colleges get a huge case of heart-burn by my telling you this; more accurately they're outraged at my suggestion here. They think that what I’m saying will deny some other deserving student a place at a college as if to suggest that no one else will place multiple deposits but you. Multiple depositing, colleges would suggest, makes you a bad person.

If this looks like a distasteful and loathsome way to maneuver to your advantage, so what? Distasteful and loathsome to whom? The colleges! They detest multiple depositing, but you shouldn't care a twit what the colleges think. They're coming after your money and your future's at stake.

Your purpose is to benefit your student, not the colleges. They have near exclusive rights on a vice called greed, and you’ve got to think of yourself first because you’re the customer, something the colleges forgot in Public Relations 101.

Here's a dirty little secret: colleges get oodles of cash from these deposits. In other words, if 2,000 students send in their non-refundable deposit of $500 but don’t show up, a college’s take on 2,000 students is - ready for this? - one million dollars, that's $1,000,000.00. Count the zeros.

Bottom Line: Weaponize your money! Make those multiple deposits and take off the pressure.

Announcing Our New Blog

This blog will allow you and all of our clients to share insights with each other about the college process. Feel free to ask questions, and on a daily basis I'll respond. No more newsletters every 2-4 weeks. Questions and answers are here daily. Or write something you'd like to share that you think will benefit this audience. Or ask a question to which I can answer that will help everyone else.

I'd like to get your feedback on whether you think your student ought to have their own blog that I can create just for them. You know...to vent, to observe, and to ask their own questions. After all we consider them adults who just so happen to be younger!

Because a blog is created daily by its participants, I just summarized below the article that Amy sent out regarding perfectionism. We hope that you will post your own comments to what you see below.

So let's get started. Tell us what's on your mind!

Perfectionism: The Damage We Can Do To Our Kids

"My parents were perfectly happy with getting Bs and Cs in college, but they expect me to get As." This from a college student whose parents demand more of their children than they did of themselves. In a recent article in Psychology Today, mostly inspired by a new book, A Nation Of Wimps, are quotable highlights:

• Perfectionism lowers the ability to take risks: it reduces creativity and innovation. Is this what we want from our kids?


• Perfectionism is an endless report card, an endless self-evaluation: you are absorbed in what you want to avoid. This undermines performance because the child is oriented toward failure. What do we reap from our kids? Endless frustration, anxiety and, yes, even depression.


• Perfectionist children feel that approval depends on performance, which leads them to believe they are only as good as they achieve.


• Perfectionist students do poorly on writng tests because they know it'll be critiqued, which is why they avoid courses in writing.


• Perfectionism comes from a parent's psychological control of the child's world, due to either the parent's exceesive concern for making their own mistakes, or from a parents' fear of separating from the child when going away to college is looming on the horizon.
  

The article makes some suggestions on what to do.

• Recognize the effort, not the end result. If your student went from an F grade to a C, that's a huge improvement. Shifting the focus to effort energizes a child to reach for a goal that's meaningful, not one that the parent expects or demands. When a good grade is achieved, resist the urge to say, "You're brilliant." Instead, you could say, "You're a good thinker," or, "It's terrific that you did X to achieve Y."
• Praise for effort produces positive moods states in what is now a positive environment for meaningful things to be done.
• Congratulate your kids. Ask why things worked out well and what they attribute their success to. Kids need to know what actions pay off in which situations. Material rewards don't work - not achieving signals a taking away of something to which you attributed value.

The most revealing moment in the article was from an executive of a major investment group. She hires only young people with the following profile: they must be first-generation immigrants because they are:

• resourceful
• hardworking, and
• good at problem-solving.

Why?

These kids have parents who don't speak English well and have to learn to figure things out for themselves; they can't rely on their parents. Their "disadvantage" made them stronger.

This article reminds me of one of my clients who's an executive at a major corporation in Massachusetts. He told me that his company's hiring criteria once included what college you went to. The company has since abandoned that criteria (HINT to Perfectionist Parents) and instead use an applicant's GPA as the most valuable criteria. Why? The company wants to see how you used your time in the last four years, not where you went to college (HINT to students).

To reinforce this point of view, the investment group executive made this remarkable statement:

"The 'fancy kids' are not perservering, not willing to work hard, not clever at problem-solving, not resourceful."

College Award Letters - They're In The Mail

At this time of year colleges are beginning to mail out their financial aid offers to next year's freshman class.

Be very careful what you read.

You did NOT receive a stone tablet where everything is carved in stone.

Here's what you're not seeing at the bottom of the letter because it's invisible:

"This is our first offer."

This is not at the bottom of the letter if your EFC (Expected Family Contibution = what you're expected to pay) exceeds the college's cost this year. But it's there if your EFC is below the college's cost of attendance.

This all means one thing: you can appeal the award letter. Yes!

Colleges think you're dumb enough NOT to notice that you can appeal their "award," which is really the bill made to look like a huge favor thrown in for good PR.

Don't be deceived. Colleges have appeal budgets that are not disclosed on their websites. Not for a moment are they going to signal to you that if you don't like their offer, you can always ask for more.

Bottom Line: You can ask for more. It doesn't mean you'll get more, but many colleges will offer a little bit more to make you feel good. It's a "touchee-feelee" thing with those people.*

What do you stand to lose if you don't ask?
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*"those people" is a term that Robert E. Lee used when he referred to his enemy during the Civil War. It's a term we use here in the same manner. In other words, the colleges are not your friends as much as they would like to portray themselves with all that glossy mailbox literature you receive.