It’s senior year and emotions are running high. Extreme stress and excitement intermingle with raging hormones, 24-seven texting, and endless social media posts.
Before you know it, you and your high schooler will find yourselves smack in the middle of the mind-boggling process of college applications: considering schools, going on tours, filling out endless applications, and drafting well-written essays.
Most high schoolers who grapple with the challenging, multi-faceted, and time-sensitive college application ordeal find it extremely stressful and overwhelming. Staying up late can backfire during the school day, and re-writing essays is really hard when they’re trying to make an impression and stand out from the crowd — on top of making time for all of their high school homework and after-school commitments.
And, as a caring parent, you may feel compelled to push, prod, nag, encourage, and make suggestions. But then you get stressed out as well.
In the end, the hard work will pay off. But in the meantime, how can teens and parents keep their health and sanity in check?
There are ways to alleviate all of that stress, according to Dr. Yamalis Diaz, clinical associate professor of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone’s Child Study Center. She offers valuable tips on how you and your family can help your teen beat the college application blues.
Tammy Scileppi: So, how can parents help?
Dr. Yamalis Diaz: First, let me say that one way parents and teachers often attempt to provide “support” may actually be counterproductive to the teen’s ability to develop effective coping mechanisms — they provide excessive reassurance. (“It’ll be fine … you’ll do great … don’t worry about it… you’ll figure it out,” etc.) This is a natural thing to do when a teen tells you they are stressed or worried about something.
The problem is that this does not allow the teen to explore, process, and problem-solve the source of their stress, and instead, [it] works to brush it aside or minimize it before effectively coping or problem-solving. If you do this enough times throughout their lives, the learned coping mechanism is to avoid thinking too much about it and just set it aside. That’s not coping — it’s avoiding. There needs to be a healthy balance.
Thinking too much and actually worrying or ruminating is unhealthy … not giving it any thought and failing to problem-solve or learn to cope with stressors is also unhealthy. Parents and teachers can best help by finding ways to allow the teen to effectively think about and process their sources of stress and avoid providing excessive reassurance.
TS: What are other ways parents and teachers can help alleviate college application-related fear and anxiety?
YD: Being careful about the “messaging” related to college and avoiding a message that feels too intense. For example, saying things like, “You HAVE to get into a good college. If you don’t get into the best college, X will happen, etc.” can really set the stage for the pressure to build. Instead, discuss college expectations in realistic and hopeful terms:
• Validate their feelings of stress and be open to discussing their stressors.
• Help them identify effective coping strategies that work for them — exercise, time with friends, engaging in hobbies, etc.
• Help them develop a system for getting organized and manage multiple demands effectively.
• Provide assistance to help get things done, without doing it for them.
TS: Discuss your own experience working with high schoolers in your practice.
YD: One of the biggest issues we see is teens experiencing significant stress and anxiety that leads to avoidance. Unfortunately, it is a natural tendency to avoid things that make us feel anxious. Setting it aside or distracting yourself for a bit is not a bad thing, but avoidance means you’re simply not doing anything to address the stressor, which creates a circular process of increasing stress without resolution (worrying vs. avoiding, doing nothing vs. more to do, time running out, stress increasing and intensified worrying, and so on).
Unfortunately, when they finally get to it, they either don’t do nearly as good a job as they could have done, or they decide not to do it at all (e.g., taking some of the colleges they wanted to apply to off their list, because they’re short on time).
TS: What are some steps students can take to get through this difficult process?
YD: Get organized! This is the perhaps the single best way to both manage the process and prepare for the transition to college. One of the reasons many students have such a hard time transitioning is that once they start college, they are suddenly left to their own devices to manage their time and tasks independently. Thus, they are suddenly managing almost every aspect of their daily lives for the first time, with significant consequences hanging in the balance if they fail to manage it effectively. Instead, they should:
• Start developing a realistic timeline to help you manage the multiple aspects of the applications with plenty of time to get them done.
• Don’t procrastinate. Learn to tackle things that make you anxious first vs. last. Everything after the hardest thing feels easy, and once you have momentum, it’ll be easier to get things done.
• Talk to parents, teachers, and other college students to get advice on how to manage the process.
• Learn to recognize signs of chronic stress, anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns and get help. Many people don’t realize how susceptible college students are to mental health problems. In fact, this is the period of development with the highest level of mental health problems, most notably anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders. It’s important for parents and teens to know and understand important signs in order to get help before the concerns spiral.
TS: Why can academic achievement lead to under-achievement?
YD: Unfortunately, teens who have been “over achievers” (or simply highly focused on achievement) can sometimes develop perfectionist tendencies or really unreasonable expectations for achievement. When I talk with parents about this issue, I highlight the difference between having a conscientious work ethic vs. being a perfectionist. There is a big difference between the two, with very significant implications.
Perfectionist standards are hard to meet. (After all, there’s no such thing as perfect all the time.) And they require levels of effort that just can’t be sustained as work and demands get harder. As a result, it may lead them to burn out and buckle under the pressure and begin avoiding or disengaging from things, because they feel too stressful. Thus, teens may begin to underachieve instead. This is one of the ways that otherwise smart and talented young students may end up failing courses or even dropping out in their early college years.
TS: What about teens with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?
YD: For teens with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the process is slightly different. What first gets overwhelmed for them are their executive functions (organization, time management, planning, decision-making, problem-solving, etc.) as these are deficits related to the disorder in the first place. Once they lose their footing, or fail to establish it at all, the cycle of anxiety may begin and proceed similarly to what I just described.
What is particularly difficult for teens with ADHD is the unfortunate combination of anxiety/perfectionism plus the disorder. This is a tough combination in the brain because anxiety can make you too focused on relatively small details (e.g., each sentence of a big paper being exactly right) while ADHD makes it hard to focus and complete tasks. Using this example, can you imagine how long it would take to write a good paper when you’re striving to make it “perfect” but having a hard time concentrating? Either way, very little to nothing gets done. And this is just one paper for one class among the many other things they need to manage. And, again, that cycle of avoidance may ensue, leading to underachievement and mounting pressure.
In addition, they should be sure to visit their college’s disability support services center as soon as possible to get appropriate academic accommodations (e.g., extra time to complete assignments) and other support services such as study skills workshops. Parents can help with this by helping to identify the appropriate center and help the teen schedule an appointment in advance.
TS: After the application process is completed, what are some tips for high schoolers and parents, as they head off to college?
YD: The number one tip is to develop a system for getting organized early on. Habits are hard to develop if you don’t already have them, so find small organization strategies that work for you and practice them.
Another, often less discussed issue, is the changing relationship between parents and their college-aged kids. While teaching the class I co-developed at NYU, aptly named “twentysomething¸” I have discussed this topic with many college students and have heard that students sometimes feel that their parents can be a significant source of stress for them.
There are many reasons for this, ranging from the parent’s own anxiety about what their kids are doing at college to understandable conflicts about real issues (e.g., misuse of money, failing grades). It can also be because there is a bit of a gray area as teens progress into what is now called emerging adulthood (not quite adults, but no longer adolescents). This means they may pull for independence in some ways, but rely heavily on their parents in other ways and, as a result, both sides may have trouble knowing how best to navigate the changing relationship, which can lead to conflicts and stress.
I recommend having calm and open discussions about expectations and realistic ways for teens to meet those expectations, including how often to “call your mom!” (a source of disappointment for many a college student parent).
TS: In your opinion, does pre-college stress and its impact on teens carry more weight today than it did say, 20 or 30 years ago?
YD: Absolutely! We have the highest rate of college attendance in history, which means we have a highly educated millennial generation. In the context of current economic conditions, this means we have a highly educated generation but not enough jobs.
This sets the stage for a very competitive environment, both in college and in the workplace, and that sense of extreme competition is trickling down to teens (and kids). As a result of this dynamic, there are both subtle and very overt messages at school, at home, in the media, etc. that you have to get into a good college and then compete for a good job.
This is a simple summary of how the pressure to go to college has ratcheted up significantly, and the pressure is beginning to mount among younger and younger children. Just ask some of the kids who have gone through the middle school application process, and you’ll quickly get a sense of the intensity of that stress and pressure.
Tammy Scileppi is a Queens-based freelance writer and journalist, parent, and regular contributor to New York Parenting.
