Sending Your Teen Off to College?

You’ve bought all the stuff and had all the talks, they'll meet their roommate, start classes, and be on their own soon. But how are you going to ensure their success?

According to a 2024 survey of 1,000+ college students and parents by GapWell, we are sending our kids off to college prepared in many ways, but they could use more help. And while you can't ensure success, you can be aware of these needs and help them do their best during this first major period of independence.

The top five areas in which students wish they had received more advice when they first started college are:

1.     Studying more efficiently

2.     Managing money

3.     Apps/Tech/Hacks

4.     Time management

5.     Talking to professors

GapWell co-founder Seth Kessler offers these tips and resources:

1. Calendar-ing – If you haven’t already, start inviting your child to appropriate appointments and family functions. They need to start living by their calendar. They can’t be organized without knowing what they're doing and when, and they need to be sure they’ll never miss turning an assignment in on time.

2. Normalizing failure – They may not get into their first choice sorority, make the team, or get an A on their first test. Let them know that it’s okay and that you support them. Share with them when you have failed and how you bounced back.

3. Empowering them to solve their own problems – Students need to seek out advice, figure out potential solutions, and not have their parents feed a plan to them.

4. Practicing responsibility NOW – Empower them to run their own errands, make their own doctor's appointments, pick up their own prescriptions, and manage their own budgets. Let them learn how to take care of themselves, so they don't need their parents to take care of even the smallest mundane tasks.

5. Seek out wiser older students – Nobody knows it all, but by inviting conversations with others who have been there / done that will provide them with the valuable insights that will best support their path forward. Let them learn from those who came recently before them.

   
   

Start a conversation with your student about these areas by asking open-ended questions to get them talking about their concerns.  Come at it with a real sense of curiosity, not with an agenda, and watch how they open up. And if the conversation just isn't happening, build their resilience. Remind them that you don't expect perfection and that mistakes are part of learning, and make sure they know that you are always on their team.

Learn more about GapWell, the GapWell Guide, the College Crash Course and other resources for helping college students by visiting GapWell.com and the GapWellGuide.com. And check out this blog post about the importance of organization for young adults.