By David W. Clark, Ed.M.

Mark your calendar!

An evening program for college-bound high school students and parents:

Become a savvy college consumer. So little time, so many choices. This workshop will include strategies for making the college search work for you and help in de-mystifying paying for college.

Sept. 9 at 7 PM: Newtown Public Library (201 Bishop  Hollow Road in Newtown Square)

Reservations, please. E-mail Mr. Clark at david@collegesearchnow.net.

Need directions? Have a question? Call Mr. Clark at 610-304-719 (cell) or 610-642-4873 ext. 52 (office).

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Two breezy and informative books you’ll find essential as your family moves through the college search process:

Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course on Getting His Kid into College by Andrew Ferguson (published by Simon & Schuster, 2011)

Spoiler alert: We, parents, sure put a lot of our hopes and fears into the college search of our children. Is it really a zero-sum game with winners and losers?

Unspoken message: Economically and culturally, attending college is no longer an option in America today.

Never mentioned: Where your son/daughter ends up going to college is NOT an assessment of your worth as a parent, or his/hers as a person.

I knew it all along: Money makes a difference in the college search, and so do the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

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Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be by New York Times columnist Frank Bruni (Grand Central Publishing, 2015)

The essential message here for all college-bound high school students and families echoes important pathways to a healthy college search experience.

Theme: College is what you put into it.

Bruni quote (page 27): Sociologist D. Michael Lindsay’s (2014) Platinum Study studied 550 U.S. leaders: CEOs, Presidents of not-for-profits, U.S. Presidents, and other government leaders. Finding? The group of undergraduate colleges attended by these accomplished leaders was highly diverse and showed no pattern, no Ivy league bias.

Echo: SATs roughly track future income. Or as Alan Krueger said in explaining his research, (Bruni, page 140): “A good student can get a good education just about anywhere.”

Next week’s topic: University Honors programs. Great value for your tuition dollar.

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David W. Clark, Ed.M. is an independent college admission consultant – with an office in Paoli – who has been working with high school students for more than 35 years. David is a graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. His website is www.collegesearchnow.net and he can be reached there.

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Top photo credit: *Muhammad* The Queens College via photopin (license)

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