The Journey: How to Prepare Kids for a Competitive and Changing World

INTRODUCTION

DON’T ASK WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS. ASK WHAT MAKES YOU COME ALIVE AND GO DO IT. BECAUSE WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS IS PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME ALIVE.

—BRENÉ BROWN

QUESTION: Where do you see yourself in ten years?

ANSWER: (1) Financially stable, and (2) happy.

THIS IS THE FIRST QUESTION I ask when meeting new students, and since it is seemingly unrelated to college, it catches them off guard. Believe it or not, based on answers from the thousands of high school students I meet, the heartfelt desires of the next generation are relatively simple. They want to have a stable career, and they want that career, among other things, to make them happy.

Yet at the end of the day, this simple good is all we can want for ourselves or our children. And it is why elite universities are so coveted by students and parents alike. What parent doesn’t want their child to be successful? What child doesn’t see themselves living independently as an adult? And isn’t it easy to assume that the path to success is through a name-brand university and a prestigious career?

While it is comforting to see young people being mindful of the importance of their health and financial independence, their underlying concern for their futures at the core of their answers initially caught me by surprise. Is it too much to ask for today?

Young people today are coming of age amid intense economic uncertainty. When I was sixteen, most of my peers assumed that they would eventually become successful. But our failure to launch has proven that we can no longer assume that financial stability or happiness is a given. A study by Credit Karma found that 40 percent of millennials and Gen Zers rely on their parents for financial support, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a whopping 20 percent of teen girls in the United States grapple with depression.

All these horrifying statistics stem from the same root cause: Young people are uncertain about their path in the world and feel the stress of being possibly unable to reach their goals. More often than not, this stress manifests itself in an unhealthy attitude toward college applications, a process often seen as the culmination and ultimate assessment of a young student’s accomplishments and promise.

As a college counselor, I am often confronted with dark emotions that suggest that the students I work with are not prepared to seize the day. The following is an example of what happens too often in my office:

My life is over.

A high school senior, Chloe, was in my office and sobbing. Wiping her eyes, she asked, What’s the point of even trying anymore?

I was speechless.

Had she just been diagnosed with an incurable disease? No. She was a model of physical health. A survivor of a natural disaster? Had I unwittingly triggered her PTSD? Nope. Her childhood home remained firmly standing behind an imposing guarded gate. Had she just been informed of the passing of a beloved? Possibly a parent? Again, no. Her mother, Nora, was sitting beside her, trying to process whatever it was that left them distraught. Her father, out of town on a business trip, shared their distress via FaceTime.

So, what was it?

This scene happens over and over in April when colleges announce their admissions decisions for their incoming fall classes. However, I never expected to face it so often. Despite all its flaws, at its core, the college admissions process measures an applicant’s growth in high school and potential to apply it to higher education.

I wrote my first book, Earning Admission: Real Strategies for Getting into Highly Selective Colleges, as I was first starting out as a private college admissions counselor. A road map to maximizing college acceptance potential, Earning Admission ended on an optimistic note urging parents and students alike to be excited about the college admissions process.

Seven years later, I’ve helped thousands of students prepare for and make the most of the college application process. Along the way, I have seen genuine passion, natural talent, and intense drive. Many of these students were admitted to their dream schools, including highly selective universities like Yale, Stanford, and UCLA. Even for those who were not admitted to their dream schools, I was still excited. I saw limitless potential in their futures because, even though the college process hadn’t gone exactly their way, they had grown and were prepared to make their mark on the world.

I’ve also met countless parents with a healthy approach to fostering their kids’ growth. They ably balance guiding and advising their children without being overbearing. They set realistic expectations and prioritize their children’s health and happiness above all else. They hold their kids accountable and admonish and teach them when appropriate. Most importantly, they empower their children to form and chase their own dreams.

But despite their best intentions, not every parent falls into this category. Sometimes parents unwittingly do more harm than good when they fight every battle for their children, or blindly chase prestigious school names over relevant skills and perspectives that their kids will need to succeed.

That’s what happened with Chloe, who declared that her life was over because she was rejected from Stanford. Let me put that into perspective for you: after factoring in legacy applicants and athletic recruits, Stanford rejects close to 99 percent of its applicants, including those with perfect grades, college entrance exams, and résumés.

Sitting beside her sobbing daughter, Nora turned to me and, with a businesslike shake of her head, began making excuses. The first excuse she thought of was the university was racist. I didn’t know what to say to her. Over a quarter of the school shared the same ethnic background as her daughter. Would it be possible to speak to the university? No, I said; college admissions offices don’t offer meetings to explain each decision they make.

Sensing that she was backed into a corner, Nora wondered aloud: Maybe her high school had sabotaged her daughter because she’d complained about two teachers who gave her daughter a B in her college-level calculus class. Could she speak to her lawyer about suing the school? Perhaps, I said, but high schools want to see their students have success in the college admissions process because it reflects well on them, so that possibility was highly unlikely.

Having exhausted all her options, this mom came up with one final strategy. It was okay. Chloe would reapply the following year and she would surely be admitted then: which is precisely what needed to happen so that Chloe could grow up to be a tech entrepreneur.

I didn’t know what to say to either of them. Yes, it is normal to be disappointed by a college rejection, but this was not just a clear overreaction but a misguided belief of what was needed for Chloe to be prepared to achieve her long-term goals.

Yet, as a private college counselor, I can’t make this stuff up. I wonder: Are we doing enough to prepare our children for the next steps of their lives in a rapidly changing, hypercompetitive world? If you need a minute to think, don’t worry. You’re not alone. But let’s start with the prime example of what we shouldn’t be doing.

In 2019, in a nationally explosive scandal dubbed Operation Varsity Blues, Newport Beach, California–based college counselor Rick Singer was charged with federal racketeering and wire fraud for developing an admissions scheme in which wealthy families paid bribes to facilitate their children’s admission to highly selective colleges.

The explosive publicizing of this scandal exposed the great lengths many parents go to in order to help their children. These methods, previously whispered about privately in affluent areas, were laid bare for the world to see. As a college admissions adviser with a practice in Newport Beach, the scandal hit too close to home for me. I had heard of Rick Singer in the community, and I was angry. I was convinced that it was the end of my career advising students in a healthy and honest way. But I wasn’t the least bit surprised.

A Los Angeles Times reporter called me the morning that the U.S. Attorney announced the indictments against dozens of families and asked if I could comment on the story. Of course I could, I thought. Do I tailor my response to just Singer’s actions and lay the blame solely on him? Or do I tell the truth about what is really going on with the college admissions craze?

Holding true to my desire to help students grow and achieve their dreams, I chose the latter. Despite my fears that it would turn away existing and potential clients of mine, I told the reporter that the Varsity Blues scandal was not news. It was a symptom of a larger societal problem that extended past the college counseling industry: a toxic approach to parenting that is devouring many young, promising lives.

I let the reporter know, on the record, that the parents who hired Singer were as much to blame as he was. Getting into Stanford, Georgetown, or an Ivy League university has evolved into the ultimate status symbol. It requires the perfect combination of financial resources, parental success, and natural student aptitude. College admissions have become the modern-day gold rush for many high-achieving communities and a chance for parents to show that beyond being successful in their own lives, they have also succeeded in raising equally promising children. For parents desperate to strike gold, Singer’s approach to college admissions struck a chord.

The reporter wanted to know what it would take to prevent something like this from happening again. Better regulations? More transparency with how admission is decided? A different approach to college admissions entirely? I told her that all those would be nice, but we need to go back to where it all begins: at home.

To make this process healthier and more rewarding for our children, we need to change the way we think about college in general. Getting into a good college is important, but college is the means to an end, not the be-all and end-all. A college education is a chance for students to develop the skills, perspective, and experience they need to achieve their long-term career and life goals.

Yet, many parents have lost sight of this as they zero in on the shininess of college names that sound amazing: Harvard, Stanford, MIT. This mindset affects every parenting decision they make. For the reporter, I cited mad spring dashes to enroll in overpriced summer camps hosted at fancy colleges or how parents threaten to sue teachers and schools when their kids earn Bs on essays that the parents wrote. The reporter was shocked. She had a two-year-old at home and was dumbfounded that this was what awaited her when her child reached high school.

As a society, we are seeing more than just wealthy adults bribing elite universities and hiring people to help students cheat their way into college. We are seeing crippling mental health issues in teens and young adults that are exacerbated by the pressure to perform at the highest levels. We are seeing a proliferation of cheating, sometimes sanctioned by parents, to maintain those high levels of performance. And when kids are admitted to college, even their dream schools, we see the true damage of these habits. A whopping 55 percent of Yale undergraduate students surveyed in a study confessed to being chronically depressed. Ill-prepared for the real world, 43 percent of college students are now dropping out or are unable to finish their degrees within six years of starting their college studies.

My LA Times interview, which I expected to potentially make me unappealing to existing and prospective clients, was distilled into a small quote about a status obsession. Meanwhile, my business continued to grow at an unprecedented rate, held aloft by college acceptance rates that continue to plummet to new lows. Families, terrified that they are being left behind in the college admissions frenzy and challenging job market, continue to hire me. The irony is that, if anything, the Rick Singer scandal made people today even more concerned about their kids’ odds of earning admission to highly selective colleges and even more willing to seek professional help.

Everything that didn’t make it into the LA Times article is discussed in this book. But beyond the college obsession held by many, I want to orient the conversation to how best to prepare one’s kids for a changing and competitive world so that they can achieve health, happiness, and financial independence—which means we need to ask ourselves: Where is our shortsighted obsession with achievement leading us?

If you don’t believe me, just look at the stats. Twenty-five percent of young adults ages twenty-five to thirty-four are unable to afford to live away from their parents.¹

We are on the precipice of millions of white-collar jobs evaporating due to technological advancements like artificial intelligence. At the same time, business leaders and employers are raising red flags that the biggest threat to the survival of their businesses is their ability to attract and retain qualified workers. Beyond these statistics, I can give you firsthand anecdotal evidence, straight from my college counseling offices, of kids who are about to crack when they encounter the harsh real world because they are unprepared to face it head-on.

So, what should parents be doing to prepare their kids for the world they are inheriting?

Every child is on a unique path to achieving their version of fulfillment. What makes them tick will shape what they need to do to achieve their goals. With that said, here are three key traits that parents should help their children cultivate for their futures that, oddly enough, are also exactly what college admissions officers look for in prospective students:

1. Grit

Grit is defined as one’s ability to deal with life’s monumental and day-to-day challenges. In an era when young people are dropping out of college over roommate disagreements and dining hall food not to their liking, or increasingly relying on their parents to address concerns with their bosses at work, instilling grit in the next generation is critical. While sports can help young people grow physically and mentally stronger on a field, court, or in the pool, we need to prepare young people for all aspects of their lives.

Yet sometimes parents prevent their children from developing grit by being snowplow parents. Like any strong herding dog (think German shepherds, Australian cattle dogs, border collies, etc.), snowplow parents dedicate themselves to removing every obstacle from their child’s path. This is done not to ensure survival but rather achievement. By doing so, they prevent their child from developing the critical skills they need to independently overcome obstacles and thrive.

Other times, parents transform into terminator parents. Similar to the fiercest rottweilers or mastiffs and related to the snowplow parent, these parents will stop at nothing and engage in scorched-earth tactics to ensure that their child achieves what the parents want them to. Whether it is threatening to sue a school or teacher over an undesirable grade or finding doctors who corroborate learning differences to get extended time on college entrance exams, the terminator parent who will stop at nothing goes to great lengths to achieve potentially Pyrrhic victories. Along the way, they set a dangerous precedent for their child that achievement at all costs is worth it.

Instead, to instill grit in young people, we need to make sure they know what it’s like to be the low person on the totem pole and deal with a difficult boss, coworkers they don’t like, and customers who make them want to pull out