My Kid Has Been Accepted to College. But Is She Ready to Go?

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Reena Ninan:
How do I know if my child is truly ready for the college experience?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
High school graduation and college readiness are not the same thing. Are you going to get run over by a roommate or by what’s going on at a party? Are you going to make friends? Are you going to be lonely? It is incredibly costly for a kid to have to leave college early. It’s not like you hit this finish line when you drop them off. There’s still time.

Reena Ninan:
I still cannot imagine that there will be one year when I will be going through this of finding out where my child got into school and it’s that time of year, Lisa, right? Correct me if I’m wrong, where lots of people know by now.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yep. At this point, Reena, people, this is resolved. For better or for worse, this is resolved. A lot of families get it nailed down in December if their kid has applied early. But whatever else, usually by April 1st, the decisions are all in and kids know if they’re going and maybe even where they’re going.

Reena Ninan:
I want to read you this letter about a parent who’s wondering if their child’s ready to go.
It says, “Dear Dr. Lisa and Reena, I’m writing about my daughter who has just been accepted to college. She is bright, kind, and capable, but she’s also been fairly sheltered. And I worry about how she’ll manage a social side of this transition. She tends to be more passive than assertive, especially in unfamiliar situations. I’m concerned about whether she’ll be able to stand up for herself if she ends up with a tricky roommate. And I also wonder how she’ll handle the party scene, whether she’ll be able to hold her own, make thoughtful choices, or resist getting swept up in decisions she might later regret. I don’t doubt her character or her values. I just worry that she hasn’t had much practice navigating uncertainty, pressure, or situations where there’s no clear right move.
And college seems full of those moments. So my question is this, how can I tell whether she’s truly ready to go and what can I still do now to help her prepare? Thank you.
How worried do you think this parent should be? Because you remember during COVID, Lisa, there were a lot of parents and families who had kids with them all those years in high school where they didn’t really get a chance to form their own identity and go out and break the rules. And I just wonder if there are still lots of parents who still feel that way about their child.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think that’s exactly it. And actually, I had one of those kids. My older daughter graduated from high school in 2022, went to college in the fall of ’22 and had just started resocializing or socializing again, in her senior year. COVID started six years ago. That seems to me so strange. It feels like it was a million years ago, it feels like it was yesterday. But one of the things we know post-COVID is kids have gone closer to home since then. Kids don’t go as far away. But also what this letter says about this kid being sheltered, I think there’s definitely just been more of a homebodyness in adolescence in the wake of COVID, even though it feels like it was so long ago. So I think it still holds this idea of like, my kid’s not that worldly or my kid hasn’t really been in these dicey situations and now she’s 18 and suddenly she’s out the door. And how do I have confidence that she’s going to manage this, especially now far away from us or not living at home anymore? I think a lot of families have this question.

Reena Ninan:
Totally. I couldn’t agree more. This letter felt so on in so many ways because do you ever really feel like your child is like, okay, ready, go. I mean, I’m sure some parents do, but there are so many things. I went off to college. I had never done laundry ever in my life. My mother had always done our laundry. Never, ever had I done it.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
There’s a lot of clutch stuff in the summer before kids go to college or suddenly you’re like, “Oh my gosh, you don’t know how to do these things.” And I think there is often a lot of panicked quick teaching that happens. I think there’s also a lot of kids figuring stuff out when they get there. Interestingly, today’s teenagers, they’ll just YouTube anything they don’t know how to do. They’ll look it up manage it.

Reena Ninan:
So true.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
But I do think that there is this general feeling in homes. The only exception that some parents don’t feel this way. I think if your kid’s been at boarding school, I think a lot of parents are like, “Well, it’s just the next level of that.” But if you take boarding kids out of the equation, I think a lot of families are looking at their kid one way or another wondering, “Are you really ready?” And it can be as it is in this letter about you’re just not that assertive, right?
Are you going to get run over by a roommate or by what’s going on at a party? But I also think, I just want to normalize for families. I think a lot of parents are sitting across the table from their kid looking at their kids’ manners and being like, “Oh my Lord, we really thought we would have this better managed before you went to college and now you’re 18 and really don’t want me to ride you about this.” So I think whether it’s, “Are you going to be buck wild or are you going to remember to put your napkin in your lap?” I think that the worries that parents have run the gamut of those kinds of concerns.

Reena Ninan:
I want to ask you about the roommate piece because I think that can be very much a make or break because this is the person you end up coming back to, you’re sharing space with, you’re figuring out how to make those tensions work. How concerned are you with a child who might be a little bit more quiet and passive if you have an aggressive roommate situation?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s an issue. Actually, of the things in the letter that I was like, “Ooh, that could actually be pretty tricky.” I’m actually not that worried about this kid at parties, though I think we should talk about it. It does happen that even if kids choose their roommate, which increasingly kids do, people find themselves in situations where the roommate’s not a great person to live with, I think is the big generic way to say it. And it may either be because they’re inconsiderate, more than just garden variety inconsiderate, like really inconsiderate, like leaving their stuff everywhere, using your own kids’ stuff, or it may be that the roommate is struggling in a pretty significant way. We have kids who are coming to college with pretty significant mental health concerns that are not well addressed, so that they may be very, very depressed or struggling with substances, or having an open problem that is obvious to their roommate, and that causes a lot of anxiety and worry for the roommate who then is trying to figure out what to do.
Whether your kid is like the one in this letter, somebody you’re worried is going to have a hard time standing up for themselves, I would say across the board, there should probably be some preliminary conversations just to say, “Look, you haven’t met your roommate, but here’s a couple things I just want to say before you go. One, I hope it’s great. Two, if it’s not, you’ll make a lot of other friends. And three, if you feel like they’re impinging on your thriving in college, we’re all here to help. We can coach you through it. We can talk about it. That is not something you have to deal with by yourself.”

Reena Ninan:
You know what? That’s great advice that everybody should sort of have that roommate conversation. Even if you’re dorming with your best friend, I mean, no matter what the situation is, there should be a roommate conversation you’re making me realize.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think there should, because what I know, and I know this both from friends in college counseling, I know this from having taught college for a long time, is that these super wonderful, well-meaning 18-year-olds will end up taking on or dealing with far more than they should often in a tricky roommate situation. They’ll feel responsible for their roommate’s care or they will tolerate their roommate, like locking them out so they’re carrying on their romantic life. They adapt far too much. And I actually remember a piece I wrote a while ago for the times, and we’ll link it in the show notes about tricky roommate situations. I remember talking to a college counseling person who was like, “In those first semester, so much is changing and they’re so stressed, they’re just operating on instinct and so they don’t necessarily reach out for the help they need.” And so the bottom line on the roommate stuff is kids do not have to manage this alone.
We can talk them through. There’s an RA, there’s a dean of students, there’s a lot of support for this. The goal isn’t like have a fabulous roommate situation. The goal is, if it’s not going well, don’t feel isolated with it.

Reena Ninan:
I want to flip this party piece on its head a little bit. For parents who might have a kid who’s sort of borderline, like maybe they’re not a party animal, but maybe they’re also not able to sort of stand up for themselves in these moments. What’s your advice on preparing kids for wild college parties?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s like so hard as a parent to be like, “Holy moly. My kid is going to be several states away going to parties that I don’t really want them at.” I mean, I can say this as a mother of a college kid. It’s hard. It’s really hard. So I think that we actually probably have to pull back the lens here a little, which is there are some conversations you can still have. The summer before college, there’s all these things we want to say to our kid. And I do think it’s worth saying, I do want to come back to how we even have those conversations because the kid is usually not like, “So walk me through everything you ever wanted to say.” I do think like if we pull the lens way back, the kind of questions I want families to be asking themselves right now, right? If you are looking at a kid who thinks they’re headed to college in the fall, the kind of questions you want to ask yourself are like, “Does my kid really understand that they are responsible for their own safety?” That the end of the day, their safety is their responsibility.
And if you’re like, “Yes, my kid gets this, and my kid will get this at a frat party, and my kid will get this on spring break, my kid gets this.” You can probably take a breath and relax a little bit. But if you’re like, “I don’t know. I mean, my kid does things that are impulsive and not well thought out and luckily nothing’s gone wrong, but they don’t seem to walk around with this in their bones understanding that they’re responsible for themselves. That’s a time where you actually, I think, want to pause. There may be conversations that do the job, but you also may have to consider the possibility that college in the fall may not be a great choice for your kid.

Reena Ninan:
The other piece, Lisa, that I worry about in addition to parties, and maybe even more so than parties, is what if your kid is struggling socially to make friends? Isn’t that outgoing type who is really good at finding new social circles? And I worry that maybe they go off to college and they don’t find their people. What’s your advice for helping prepare the ground for that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s a worry, right? Parents worry about that. Are you going to make friends? Are you going to be lonely? I think kids worry about it too. Colleges will tell you this has gotten harder and weirder as kids have these really, really robust social media networks. And so the kids themselves are anxious coming in, they’re anxious about making connections and friends. And so sometimes the way they handle that is they just stay lost in their phone and in close contact with the kids they went to high school with to the detriment of making meaningful connections with other people right there in front of them. Parents worry about this, kids worry about this. And actually, frankly, colleges worry about this, that kids are not connecting as they should. I think it’s really helpful for young people to have something they plan to do in college besides just go to class.
Reena, did you do journalism stuff right when you got to college? Were you already on that path?

Reena Ninan:
No, I think that was more like after school internships and that sort of thing. Freshman year, you’re trying to get down the core stuff that you need to before you get into maybe the meatier stuff that you’re really interested in learning. And I think sometimes that adjustment is hard because you have a 9:00 AM class and you’re not used to waking up at 9:00 AM on your own without your mom screaming down your bed to wake up. So I feel like there’s a lot of those adjustments that you’re finally an adult and you’ve got to figure it out on your own.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s true. But I went in and I did a lot of community service and I was kind of playing sports and I had places and ways I was plugging in besides just showing up at class. Did you do clubs or activities or student life stuff?

Reena Ninan:
Yeah, no, definitely. But I felt like there was a flow of people I met and we went in and we did the same clubs and it kind of … But I also feel, Lisa, that was like 30 years ago and I feel like the world has changed. And I think that there’s a bit of anxiety that us parents have when you’re really letting the one thing that really matters to you in life go. How do I know if my child is truly ready for the college experience? Is there a ruler of measurement, the Lisa Damour college test of how you know?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, okay. So just on the social thing for a minute, I think the good news is in the 30 years, I think there’s more clubs than there ever were, like more ways for kids to plug in. So I think a kid who just goes to class and goes back to their dorm may have a hard time, but if they do anything else, they’re likely to find some people. And I think both students and parents can take reassurance in that. In terms of the like, what’s my, your kid is ready to go to college index.
I’ll tell you what it’s not. Your kid has graduated from high school. Okay. High school graduation and college readiness are not the same thing and we confuse them all the time and we don’t want to do that. There’s two things I would want to see. So the first I’ve already mentioned, which is my kid fundamentally understands that safety is their job. And then the second, okay, colleges are so expensive. These are educational settings. I always have misgivings. When I hear about a kid who’s headed to college who is not at all interested in the academics or the classes, like they just want to go for the experience, right? Be it social or whatever. I’m like, “Well, now wait a minute. That’s a lot of money to not be interested in what the college is actually selling, which is an education.” What I would want to see is both, I think first and foremost that your kid understands their job, that safety’s their job.
And second, that they can derive meaning and value from what the college is offering beyond the social, beyond the moving away from home. I think that’s really important. And if your kid’s like, “Yeah, I want to go, but I don’t really care about school.” Well, that’s a very expensive choice to make. I think there’s other ways that their time may be better used and that they may within a year or two be like, “Actually, now I do care about school. Great. Now’s a good time to go to college.”

Reena Ninan:
Is there like a hard and fast rule for you when you might have to hit the pause button?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Let’s talk about the pause button. Okay. So if there’s a question like, “My kid’s not into academics at all, why are we spending all this money or why are they going to go into all this debt for school?” Or there’s a question like, “I don’t think my kid actually gets it that safety’s their job.” I think that is very much time to hit the pause button. And what I will say is if they’re already in, most schools will very happily hold your spot for a year, right?

Reena Ninan:
Oh reall?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. You can say, “We’re not coming this year.” Yeah. You can say, “I’m just going to defer for a year.” Colleges would so much rather have a kid who’s ready than have a kid who comes and falls apart.

Reena Ninan:
I didn’t know that was an option that you can just say, “Listen, we’re going to wait a year.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Usually it is. And I think one of the things I’ve guided families on is sometimes even in the summer before senior year or the fall of senior year, the family’s like, “I don’t know. We just retreived them from the emergency room after a party. We’re not sure this is a good idea.” I have seen families go through the college process with the support of their high school’s college guidance office. Sometimes they’re like, “Well, we don’t want to defer all of this because this kid will graduate and then who do we have helping us through it?” So they’ll go through the process all the while saying, “We’re going to do this in two steps. One, you get in, two, we decide when and if you’re going.” So it can happen in the senior year of high school, even if you’re not sure that that’s exactly when the kid’s going to go.
Reena, the thing I want people to know is that it is incredibly costly for a kid to have to leave college early.
For a kid to get there and either have so much academic disengagement that they’re falling apart academically or have so much trouble managing themselves safety wise that the school asks them to leave or it becomes clear they need to come home. Okay, here’s what people need to know. You cannot apply to another college without reporting all of your previous college experience. So it’s not like you start from scratch applying to new schools. Often the best bet is to try to get back into the school where you were asked to leave or had to leave, but that is often like this long probationary period. I am not ever comfortable when a family’s like, “Well, it looks really dicey, but let’s see what happens.” I’m like, “That is not going to go … You don’t want to take this risk.” So much better to take a gap year than to have a kid get there and need to walk it back because the walking it back is not clean.
It is not easy. It’s expensive and I think best avoid it if you can.

Reena Ninan:
So Lisa, what else are we or parents not thinking about when you get to this point and you think they may or may not be ready for college? What should we keep in mind?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They’re never going to be 100% ready. I think that that’s the thing. I think they can’t be. It’s so different. I mean, short of having already been to boarding school, it is so totally different. So I don’t want families being like, “Oh my gosh, you don’t know how to do laundry. Should we panic?” No, your kid will figure it out. You figured it out, right? One of the things I can tell you, and I want to offer this to you as reassurance as a mom to mom is your parenting continues right through your kid going to college. It’s not like you hit this finish line when you drop them off. There’s still time. So get the big stuff in place. They care about school, they can keep themselves safe. The rest, honestly, you’ll work out over time or your kid will work out over time.

Reena Ninan:
It’s reassuring to hear. It really is. So what do you have for us, Lisa, for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. I’m thinking about families in this moment and I’m remembering this moment for myself. And so here’s a little more advice from my own experience.
There were all these things I was trying to talk to my daughter about as she was getting ready to leave for college. Some of it like we need to talk about carrying Narcan lest you run into a terrible fentanyl situation. So we had to have that conversation, but also there’s all these logistics of getting your kid out the door to college, like just forms that have to be filled out and things that need to be thought through. And I kept trying to catch her to have these conversations. And either she was in her second semester of senior year, which is super busy and a lot going down, or she was in the summer before college trying to see her friends and get out the door herself.
And we kept having these really awkward … I’d see her in the kitchen and be like, “Hey,” and try to have these conversations that she’d be like, “Ah,” because she was trying to leave the house. And so I finally got to, I was like, “I need some time where I know we can go through these three things. When are you free? Can we find a time?” And I get it. The parents might be like, “I really have to get on my kid’s calendar?” And actually in my experience, it’s going to go better for everybody if you recognize they’ve got as many things on their inner to-do list as you do and trying to coordinate as opposed to trying to just intercept them is going to be better. It’s going to work better.

Reena Ninan:
Some of us parents just can’t imagine, but it feels very emotional and sort of hard to separate. I think about it and I get teary-eyed about this moment, but one of the things you did tell me is there’s also a great feeling that comes with knowing your child is going on to this next phase of life.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s cool, right? I mean, this is sort of what we’ve been working towards so often in families. So I think there should be some celebration of it too.

Reena Ninan:
Love it. Love it. Well, thank you, Lisa, for walking us through. This is a big moment for so many families. And for so many of us who aren’t even at that moment, it helps us to navigate and to look ahead. So thank you very much. And I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.