Getting children ready for college – what really matters

Our Shoreline, CT students are – like many teens but perhaps more so due to the small town nature of our communities – quite sheltered.  We live in an idyllic community.  Very safe, secure, and beautiful.  I say this as an outsider – having lived elsewhere for the first 32 years of my life and now as a parent of three teens growing up in Old Saybrook.

Maybe because I grew up closer to a city (New York) and lived in cities (Philadelphia and Washington DC), I was simply around more independent young adults.  Maybe this generation is just more protected.  But I notice the delays in both actual independent thinking (many teens rely on their parents overly so for all sorts of decisions) and desire for independence (stunning to me – the number of students who are not that interested in getting their driver’s license.

Our job is to ensure that our children are ready to be independent.  The US college experience is perhaps the most wonderful child to adult transition in the history of humankind.  When I was growing up, my peers were eager to go and usually thrived.  Something has shifted in the last decade or two.  Students are not as eager to grow up and many are not thriving in college.

Our SAT-ACT Mastery Program is essentially a kick-off to college.  Getting them to buy into the college process is one way to get them ready for what really matters: transition to adulthood.