Part 1: How to prepare your 10 year old for college

Those are 5th graders, you know? Some schools, educators and parents would answer that question with a rigorous program of preparation. Some would just consider the question laughable, or seriously obsessive. Maybe there is some sort of middle ground that makes sense for real children in the real world. In a series of two or three articles on the subject, I’ll try to offer some practical strategies which may be of help.

First, it is important to gain perspective. It’s actually critically important to gain perspective. Above all, even or especially in a college-preparatory school, it’s vital that we remember the age our children are right now is the number one priority. As a ten year old, they need to do what is best for a ten year old, not a prospect for competitive college admission in eight years. I don’t think the two have to be in absolute conflict, but they can be, depending on how we keep our perspective.

Even for a high school student, where the transcript ‘counts for college’, it is a shame and a travesty to miss the experience, joy, nurture and growth which God intends for those years from 14 to 18 because we are so focused on getting them ready for the next level. This is all the more true when considering our middle school and elementary children.

If we’re building resumes and cramming schedules and pressuring performance for our 10 year olds, we have little vision left for discovering the fullness of God’s creative design for our children and enjoying the blessing of day by day relationship with them. If the question is whether there is something you do with a 10 year old that relates to college, I would answer yes. The answer, though, is more in terms of a “flight path” for launching our children than a rigorous program of preparation.

It’s helpful to look realistically at the college admissions picture and work our way back from there. A Headmaster for a successful prep school was talking to me recently about the frustration and heartache which can come in the college admissions process. Two excellent students – alike in most all respects – apply to the same competitive college which they think of as their standard for success, and one is admitted while the other is not. There is no obvious “why”. You just can’t count only one outcome as success.

Look at the numbers. By National Center for Education Statistics data, over 3 million students graduate high school in the U.S. in a year. Around 65% go to college – so about 2 million. US News and World Report College Rankings trade off year to year giving Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or Yale the top spots. They tend to accept less than 10% of applicants. So, if you’re focused on one of those schools taking maybe 2000 students in a year, you are looking to be in the one tenth of one percent of the students going to college in a year.

As parents, we may well think of our kids as the one tenth of one percent but look at more of the numbers. The top 25% of students enrolled at Harvard had 800 (out of 800) on their Critical Reading SAT and 790 on their Math. The top 25% of students were just about perfect on test scores. We know there is so much that test scores don’t tell, but they are part of the college admissions process.

test scores don’t tell, but we also know that they do count in the admissions process.

Competitive admissions do happen. But the numbers also tell a story. Leading state universities have competitive admissions as well, and Christian school students do well in these admissions. The student must be right for it and their record does require some specific numbers.

To me, that is healthy perspective. If we set one college or one tier of colleges as the only standard of success, we’re missing something of the variety with which God made our children. It is encouraging and challenging and growing that variety which I will turn to in the next article.