College Decisions and What I Learned

It was a journey, but my twins have finally made their college decisions. Gibby is headed to Mizzou to study sports broadcasting while Henry will attend WMU (the alma mater of not only my wife and me, but my parents as well) to study education.

While I started with a good knowledge base thanks to my CCFC course and certification, the real world and the textbook never line up completely. Throughout the long process, I learned several lessons:

Marketing matters – Between the two of them, my kids applied to 10 different schools, equally divided between in-state and out-of-state institutions. Without naming names, some colleges did a much better job of individualizing communication and eliciting excitement. Those schools made my kids feel like more than just another applicant, which drove their interest.

Personalities matter – My twins are very different. They always have been and probably always will be. Those differences extended to what, where, and how they viewed potential colleges. Big or small? Close by or far away? Which extracurriculars matter? They grappled with those factors among many others.

Money matters – That probably seems obvious - especially given what I do for a living - but I’m also a realist. I recognize that there’s a dollar amount where the heart can overrule the head. Each of my kids had to try and figure out what that amount was for them, knowing that they would be the ones to fill in the financial gap.

Transparency matters – At the beginning of the school year, I sat down with each kid to lay out how much they could expect from us – including distributions from their 529s – and made it clear that the rest was their responsibility. Want to go to an expensive school? Great, figure it out. The onus was on them to find scholarships and other sources of funding to make college financially doable. I believe that having skin in the game can be a strong motivator.

Giving up control matters – Admittedly, this was the hardest one for me. There were times when I felt like stepping in, but forced myself to hold back. It’s their future and should be their choice. That’s not to say I didn’t offer my opinion – I certainly did, probably more often than they would have liked – but I also tried to make it clear that as long as they liked the school, the campus, and it wasn’t going to financially put them behind the 8-ball post-college, ultimately, we would support whatever choice they made.

Over the next month, we’ll be celebrating their accomplishments before we shift into getting ready for the year ahead. August and their respective move-in days will be here before we know it.