11/16/2025
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You might think that since I’m a dean of admissions at a university, that my kids’ experience of applying to college would have been friction free. No. Teenage development includes a predictable entanglement of insecurity, overconfidence, risk-taking, and risk-aversion. A college search is fertile ground to test out everyone’s relationship to each of those characteristics.
The summer before my daughter’s senior year of high school, she didn’t have a solid idea of what she was looking for or where to look. Since I have college admissions experience, I confidently created a list for her. It was a great list, a sampling of all the amazing possibilities that could be hers in the pursuit of college. My major mistake; forgetting my role.
Here’s what happened to us.
Given my “day job,” my daughter asked me not to talk to anyone while visiting schools. Not in the lobby, not on the tour, not in the parking lot. Nowhere. NOTHING. I’m surprised she even let me out of the car. I said I understood and said nothing to anyone.
We finished the visit and as we were driving to the next place, I asked her how she felt about the school. She shrugged her shoulders. “But did you like it?” I asked. She looked out the window, “It was fine.” Personally, I thought the whole visit was a win.
The campus was beautiful, the tour guide customized the tour route to her interests, and the school had all the things I thought she wanted. All she offered was “fine” and I let it go.
My daughter seemed uninspired by the colleges we toured
Rinse and repeat. The next school had a beautiful campus and a knowledgeable tour guide who dialed into my daughter’s interests. Afterward, in the car, I cheerfully asked, “Well?” hoping my energy would inspire a positive response. “It was OK.”
I was getting exasperated. Why didn’t she care? We had a great lineup of schools, and she wasn’t engaging. Were we wasting our time?
“But there must be something you can say about this school that you liked or didn’t like? Anything?”
“It had too many roads.”
I was speechless. The campus was small, in a small town, and while it did have drivable pathways through campus as most campuses do, I didn’t understand the point. It was not busy. Not trafficky. Did we just visit the same place together? We were silent for the rest of our drive.
Continued in the first comment
