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Encouraging Your Teen During College Admissions: 3 Practical Tips for Parents
College applications can strain even the strongest parent-teen relationships. Here are 3 strategies you can use to best support your teen during this pivotal period.
Porte Global
December 03, 2024
College applications is a time of high pressure that can strain even the strongest parent-teen relationships.
After working with so many families to help their children get into their dream colleges, we’ve noted familiar pain points that come up during every application cycle.
❌Teens tend to react more negatively to parental advice & can quickly lose motivation.
❌Parents feel pressure for their teen to succeed. Many end up pushing them in a direction that doesn’t align with their teen’s goals.
❌Both parents and teens compare themselves to others and worry that they’re not doing enough.
December is the point of most stress, so based on parent feedback, we’ve accumulated three tips that can help you encourage your teen.
3 Tips to Support Your Child
Tip #1: Recognize Your Child’s Burden
When your teen reacts negatively to your advice, it’s valid to feel frustrated. However, it’s important to remember that their stress isn’t always personal anger directed towards you.
Rather, it can be a reaction to the weight they are carrying. Your teen has to balance academics, test scores, extracurricular achievements, peer pressure, along with the demands of college applications.
The increasingly difficult competitive standards of modern college admissions only exacerbates these stresses.
1) Academics: Almost every student applying to a top college will have 4.0s or the best test scores. Programs like the AP or IB are also inherently very demanding and push students to perform their best.
Academic performance is seen as a basic requirement and this creates daily pressure for your teen.
2) Extracurriculars: With most students starting initiatives or being active in clubs, your teen might be questioning whether their activities are impressive enough. More importantly, there’s always the anxiety of whether they’re “doing the right thing.”
3) Expectations: Your teen is navigating advice from their teachers, input from peers, and their desire to meet family expectations — all while trying to figure out their own path.
The most helpful way for you to support your teen is to be patient with their struggles.
How You Can Help:
1️⃣Empathize & Acknowledge Their Efforts
When your child seems upset or frustrated, take a moment to empathize. Acknowledge their efforts and let them know you’re on the same team. This mindset shifts interactions from tension to partnership, reducing frustration for both of you.
2️⃣Celebrate Small Wins
Break down the application process into manageable steps and celebrate each milestone, whether it’s a good day at school, drafting an essay or hitting “submit” on an application.
Focusing on progress rather than perfection can help reduce feelings of being overwhelmed.
By recognizing the burden your child is carrying and approaching their stress with empathy, you can create an environment where they feel supported and understood.
This foundation of mutual respect and collaboration will not only help them keep their confidence for college applications but also strengthen your bond during this time.
Tip #2: Stop Comparisons - Solely Focus on Your Teen’s Path
Constantly comparing yourself to other families is not productive to either yourself or your child’s progress.
We have to constantly remind parents that each student has a very distinct path to success. Each has a different collection of experiences and values - just because an older student shared the same interest as your teen, it doesn’t mean that your teen should emulate them completely.
More importantly, the feeling of being constantly compared to classmates, family friends, cousins, or peers—can leave your teen feeling inadequate and discouraged.
To ground you and help you support your teen’s direction, it’s helpful to make a list of the following.
1) What are your teen’s strengths?
- What subjects is your teen constantly talking about? What are the subjects that they find easier & have more interest in?
- Which hobbies or interests bring them the most joy? Why? What are the core memories and experiences that mean the most to them?
When your teen is feeling stuck, suggesting new opportunities or areas related to their strengths can be more helpful. Teens will have less pushback and doing these activities will feel more rewarding — and be more productive for their success.
2) What does your child struggle with?
- What do they find frustrating or struggle most with academically/outside of school?
- Where do they feel less confident? Why do they feel so?
- What are the experiences and memories they’ve made that have made them avoid these areas more?
Identifying your child’s weaknesses can help you understand which areas they are most adverse to and could build on.
Why It Matters:
When you take the time to really understand your teen’s individual journey, you’re building confidence and showing them that their path is what matters—not how they stack up to others.
Tip #3: Find a Near-Peer Mentor
Overall, it’s very common to have your teen be less receptive to parental advice during this period. Your teen is on the brink of launching their independent lives.
What can really help your teen stay on track is finding a near-peer mentor.
A near-peer mentor is an older student - only a couple years older than your child - who is a role-model figure and supports their progress.
This can be a school alumni currently attending your teen’s dream school, or a student succeeding in the field that your teen is interested in.
The key here is that there is something that the near-peer mentor is doing which aligns with your teen’s interests & strengths.
Here’s why we recommend near-peer mentorship to all of the families we work with:
1) A near-peer mentor is much more relatable to your teen. They share more similar experiences, humour and outlooks towards life at this stage.
Thus, even if the near-peer mentor may be offering the same advice as you are, your teen will naturally be more receptive to hearing it from someone closer to their age.
2) Near-peer mentors give your teen a much clearer picture of what’s required to achieve their goals. Their past experiences in their field - whether that’s also volunteering at a clinic your teen goes to, or starting a project of their own that helped them get into college - provide your teen a more detailed timeline.
The perk of having a near-peer mentor is that their previous connections & resources can be shared with your teen as well.
3) Being close with a near-peer - someone who is similar to themselves and only a couple years ahead of where they are now - can boost your teen’s confidence and motivation. A near-peer mentor is often direct proof to a teen that their goals aren’t too big and that their dreams can be achieved.
Hearing advice from someone who’s “been there” often resonates more than hearing it from a parent. Mentorship offers relatability, inspiration, and a practical roadmap for success.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the key mindset shift to help you navigate this stage is recognizing that you and your teen share the same goal: reaching your teen’s personal best.
At Porte, we’ve always focused on nurturing each student’s personal best. We’ve seen first-hand how personalized, 1-on-1 mentorship can rapidly benefit a student’s progress - which, in turn, supports parents to help encouraging their teens to grow.
You can read more about how to pair your child 1-on-1 with a Top 20 College mentor to help them launch an initiative together here.
With empathy, patience, and thoughtful encouragement, you can strengthen your bond with your teen and help them thrive as they prepare for college and beyond.
More Resources
Upcoming Webinar: How to Create Impactful Extracurriculars
On Dec 4 from 6:00-7:00 pm PST, our team is hosting an informative webinar where we show you exactly how to create impactful extracurriculars. We tell you:
- Outdated strategies about college
- Exactly what an impactful project looks like
- Provide case studies of our successful students attending institutions like Cornell, USC, Berkeley, etc., to help you reassess your profile.
