The last  couple of days, I’ve been  exploring why some teenagers can’t emotionally handle their freshman year in college while other students behave worse than toddlers. Here are the posts:

 A Nightmarish Experience at an Ohio University
Could This Student’s Freshman Year Have Been Saved?

I was ready to move on to other topics – some parents have been asking questions about the FAFSA – –  but I decided to linger one more day on this important topic because of a note that I received last night from a woman who has spent more than two decades working with college students.

I think you’ll find her observations fascinating yet sobering. And some parents don’t come off looking good either – they are enabling a lot of this inexcusable behavior. Next week, I promise I’ll tackle the FAFSA and other topics.

An Insider’s Take on Bad Behavior

I spent 25 years working as a student affairs administrator at six different colleges, and was the director of residential life at two. I did my master’s thesis on college roommate compatibility. Sadly, this is an issue that is rampant at colleges across the country, and across the different strata of colleges–elite to open admission. My daughter experienced similar at a small Roman Catholic college.

Without writing a thesis here (which I could), I believe this stems from a convergence of two trends:

No. 1:

First, students go off to college having had unprecedented luxuries growing up. They have never shared a bedroom. Many have never even shared a bathroom. They have their own cars, their own phones, their own credit cards, and have been given a great deal of personal freedom while still in high school. Their parents have leveraged their own lives to provide the financial support such that students have little concern for the price of attending college.

Transitioning to a largely unsupervised residence hall just kick starts their desire to live a life like they have seen on MTV and in the popular media. And although their college may have asked them questions about their lifestyles to encourage roommate compatibility, too often, their parents filled out the questionnaire, or the student was afraid to be honest (“I smoke weed, I drink four nights a week, and my partner and I have been intimate since we were 15″) for fear their parents will see the questionnaire.

No. 2:

Colleges, in their quest to recruit students, provide accommodations and amenities that are more like cruise ships. Free high speed internet, free laundry equipment, 24-hour a day food service catered to each student’s whim, free health club, free 24-hour a day medical care, free counseling services, free tutoring, non-stop activities, parties, movies, clubs. They have private rooms in suites with living rooms and kitchenettes and free cable TV.

What’s Wrong With the Parents

Legal restraints and a fear of losing enrollment have made colleges unwilling to impose strict discipline or oversight. Many parents don’t make it any easier by refusing to allow students to take responsibility for their behavior, calling constantly to intervene or plead for special consideration. I was even offered bribes to “overlook” issues, but more often I was threatened with lawyers.

What will it take to change this? A fundamental shift in how we view college from a time of extended adolescence to a time for learning real-life skills for careers and adulthood. Instead, they graduate, deeply in debt, and wondering why they can’t find a job that will pay enough for them to be able to afford a private apartment, internet, health club, vacations, health insurance, and a housekeeping staff to clean up the vomit in the bathroom every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.

What Do You Think?

As always, please weigh in with your comments at the bottom! I’d love to hear what you think.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy

My Upcoming College Workshop:

I will be holding two college workshops at the University of California, San Diego on Jan. 28 and Feb. 4.  At the workshops — you can sign up for one or both – I aim to share with you ways to help you make smart decisions about picking colleges and making them more affordable.

You can learn more here and sign up for the workshops here. As you’ll see, you must register with UCSD Extension before you can enroll.

Thanks. Lynn O.

I want to thank everyone who commented on the plight of a bright young woman, who left the University of Dayton after her freshman year. Her first roommates were pigs and her experience unnerved her and her mother. If you missed the post and the accompanying comments, here is where you can find them:

A Nightmarish Experience at an Ohio University

I asked for people’s reaction to the story and what could have been done to avoid this situation or ameliorate it. Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

1. Is the school a good academic fit?

The mom shared that her daughter had earned a 4.5 GPA at her high school, which made me wonder if this was the right school for her. (At least one poster questioned whether this school represented an academic fit.) Frankly, I don’t know much about the University of Dayton except that it is a Jesuit institution in Ohio.

I did take a look at the academic profile of the freshmen attending Dayton and clearly the California teenager possessed a higher academic profile than most of her peers.  According to the College Board figures, 27% of Dayton’s freshmen were in the top 10% of their high school class.

Now let’s compare that to the percentage of students attending two Ohio colleges that attract many high achievers. Here are the number of freshmen in the 10% of their high school class at Oberlin College (68%) and Kenyon College (63%).

If the teenager was a studious girl, she probably would have been better off at a school where there is a large concentration of teenagers who are  high achievers.

2. Did she make friends?

A study released last month suggests that the odds that a child return for a second year of college could hinge on whether she has friends on campus. According to the study published in the Social Psychology of Education, friendships were more important in freshmen retention than a student’s academic abilities, financial aid, ethnicity and other issues. Here is a brief story on the study in Inside Higher Ed.

3. Did she have to live in a quad dorm!

I don’t know what the chances of getting along with your college roommate are when only two students share a small room, but they have to plummet when four strangers are stuck together in a quad.

One of my daughter’s friends suffered through a similar experience as a freshman at George Washington University. Among other issues, Caitlin’s friend was living in a quad with girls who partied late into the night and had sex with boyfriends in the room without regard to the roommates. She was utterly miserable and it played a part in her decision to leave the school. She took a semester off and ended up transferring to Georgetown University.

If I was a freshman, I’d try to avoid quads. This living arrangement can be fine for older students because they can pick their own roommates after they’ve made friends on campus. Tip: submit your housing preferences as soon as possible!

4. Was she able to designate the kind of roommates she wanted?

Many schools have incoming freshmen complete roommate questionnaires that might cut down on some of the friction. I wonder if the University of Dayton offered this.?

5. Did she have good coping skills?

Kids who are used to handling their own problems are often better able to cope with adversity including piggish roommates. When my son and daughter were growing up, my husband and I made it clear to them that they were expected to work out differences on their own. We knew we weren’t helping their development if we always interceded when they were squabbling and played referee.

When one of our kids complained about a teacher or any situation that they considered an injustice, we’d sympathize, but then we’d ask  them how they could turn the situation around. We didn’t tell them what to do, but instead urged them to think on their own. I believe this helped when they got to college.

6. Did she let her mom take over?

I loved this observation from Susan, a mom in San Diego, who wrote this yesterday:

Once parents get involved, and I know they might have to sometimes, then I think some teens might feel they can’t handle it (or anything?) on their own. Once the parent is stressed and unhappy on their teen’s behalf, then I think the teen might think the situation or school is unfixable and they HAVE to come home.

“Sounds like you are at the end of your rope, do you think I can take any action that would help?” has been a good approach for us with high school. We’ve had one time where we got a “yes, I am too angry to handle dealing with the school”, and on all other occasions our help has been declined, with a certain amount of horror expressed at the very thought of our involvement.

What’s the good news?

What I hope no one overlooks is this: leaving your first college doesn’t mean that you can’t have a positive college experience and move on to a meaningful career.

My husband and I were talking about this last night when we were walking our golden retriever. I asked him to talk about his own experience and those of his three best buddies in high school in Denver, whom Bruce described as close as a band of brothers.  Three out of the four ended up transferring someplace else.

Two of his friends started out as freshmen at Pomona College. Dave had planned to attend Brown University, but Leigh talked him out of it and they both ended up at Pomona. Sometime during the first semester they stopped talking to each other and one transferred to Colorado College and the other went to the University of Colorado.

My husband also ended up bailing on his first school — Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR — and transferred to UC Berkeley. He decided that Lewis and Clark was too homogenous. He thought the school attracted too many white affluent students, which was the same environment as his school — Cherry Creek High School — so he bailed and transferred to UC Berkeley. (Note: he never visited Lewis and Clark nor UC Berkeley, which will seem alien to parents today!)

The two teenagers who ditched Pomona — one is a successful lawyer in Denver and the other is a chief technology officer at a Boston company. My husband is a highly respected technology writer in San Diego.  The only one of Bruce’s best friends who didn’t transfer (a Stanford finance grad) made enough money to semi retire in his 40s.

Bottom Line:

I hope this young woman doesn’t consider herself a failure. She’s a little wiser now and today is the only day that counts. (I hope that didn’t sound too much like a Hallmark card!)

I also agree with many of my posters who observed that this could have happened anywhere. I don’t think attending school out of state increases your chances of having a miserable college experience.

My Upcoming College Workshop:

I wanted to let you know that I will be holding my next two college workshops at the University of California, San Diego on Jan. 28 and Feb. 4. At the workshops — you can sign up for one or both – I aim to share with you ways to help you make smart decisions about picking colleges and making them more affordable. You can learn more here and sign up for the workshops here. Lynn O.

I wanted to share with you today a comment that I received yesterday from a California mom, who shared the heart-wrenching experience of her bright daughter, who started college in Ohio. She was prompted to write after reading my college blog posts about students who desire to attend schools far from their homes. Here are two of them:

 Snobs, Pushy Relatives and Misinformed Parents

California Teen Gets Grief For Liking Southern Universities

Please read the mom’s story and after reading it, I’d be curious what you think. What advice could you give to students so they don’t encounter the same problems? Or what could students do when they encounter this kind of all-to-common behavior at college?  Just let me know what you think by filling out the comment box at the bottom of this post. I’ll share my thoughts tomorrow.  Thanks. Lynn O’Shaughnessy

One Mom’s Story

I want to share my daughters experience about leaving California and attending a well-know university in Dayton, Ohio. A year and a half ago my daughter graduated in the top 5% of her class, from a prestigious high school in a small town in California. She was able to get into every school in California that she applied too! She chose to attend the University of Dayton, Ohio. She picked this school because she wanted to go to a well attended university outside of California.

Nightmare Roommates

She didn’t know a soul in Ohio! She was placed in a quad room( 4 people) in freshmen dorms. She had done all she could to prepare her self for her new roommates. They talked on the phone, corresponded through Facebook, etc., but  nothing could have prepared her for the experience that was to follow. The first week, they had boys staying the night, partying all night long, blaring the TV and music. The final straw was a boy urinating on my daughters bed! The roommates stated wasn’t their problem!

We were able to get an emergency move after much threatening and many, many phone calls. A complete stranger that was an employee at the school finally took pity on my daughter and her inability to get help from the staff and she was able to facilate a move.

Emails phone calls to faculty and even the university president were never answered or returned!! This is a school, where the president addressing us parents and incoming freshmen, promised they would be “home away from home.” They would be there for our children!

Too Traumatized To Return

My daughter ended up going through 3 different sets of roommates in her freshmen year. It was so terrible that she begged to not go back, to her dream university! She gave up her scholarship and is now attending our local junior college and preparing to transfer next year, to a California school.

I share her story only to show there is another side to leaving California schools. I realize that my daughter’s experience was exceptionally bad and only heightened by the lack of communication, compassion, and help provided to us by the University of Dayton. It pains you greatly to hear your child cry everyday for over 9 months. To know that no one is able to help her! I can’t begin to describe the torture it was for our whole family.

When my daughter finally returned home to California, she was humiliated because she had a 4.5 GPA leaving high school and now her only option was to attend a junior college to get enough units to transfer.

I told my daughter, she should not feel bad for having followed her dream. At least she tried it!

What Do You Think?

Now that you’ve heard the mom’s story, what do you think?

If you didn’t read my college blog post yesterday, I hope you do because it focused on a lot of hot-button issues for parents and teenagers trying to navigate the college process. The post, which was actually an email from the mom of a high school senior, touched upon such issues as:

Brand name snob appeal
Pushy relatives
Mistrust of attending schools far away
Misinformed teachers/counselors/students

It’s no wonder that the post generated lots of comments. And a big THANK YOU to everyone who did post their thoughts, which I thought were all quite helpful.  If you didn’t read the post, here it is:

California Teen Getting Grief for Liking Southern Universities

To sum up, Karen (mom) and Nicole (daughter) conducted their college search in a thoughtful and methodical approach that has sadly generated a lot of flak from relatives, friends, teachers and counselors, who frankly don’t know what they are talking about. The naysayers have been generally aghast that Nicole was looking at universities in the South and Texas and didn’t know why she didn’t aim for marquee names closer to home like UCLA and USC.

My Take On All of This

Here are a few observations that I promised I’d make after Karen shared her predicament:

1. I’m tired — really, really tired — of people assuming that there are only a few schools in this country that are worth going to if you want to:

• Have a promising career.
•  Attend graduate school.
•  Get into medical school or law school.

There is zero evidence that the “dream” schools that everybody has heard of – and some people actually worship -  can work that kind of magic. Frankly, motivated students wherever they attend school can accomplish any of the above goals just by persevering and working hard.

The pressure Nicole has been feeling about attending a University of California campus or USC made me recall a conversation that I had this summer with a friend of mine, who is a chemistry professor at University of California, San Diego, which is one of those highly sought-after schools. My friend mentioned that when his former students ask him for recommendations for their medical school applications, they are deflated by his response. The professor tells the students that he doesn’t know who they are — he teaches in lecture halls and teaching assistants deal with the undergrads — so he can’t write a personalized recommendation. All he can do, he explains, is write a note describing the class content and the grade that the student received.

I don’t think that’s the advantage that people assume comes from attending an intensive research university, where professors are focused on their own studies and not on undergraduates.

A School No One Has Heard Of

Let’s contrast that with what happens at the school where my daughter graduated,  Juniata College in central Pennsylvania, which is one of those schools that no one has heard of and can’t even pronounce. Juniata, where about 40% of the students major in a science,  boasts a stellar track record for getting their grads into medical school, dental schools and other medical programs.  As you can see from this link, Juniata’s success rate is 97%. And 100% of their students get into law school.

According to US News, the nation’s medical schools less than 9% of its applicants and law schools accept less than 35%, which makes Juniata’s stats look even more amazing.

2. People knowledge of “good” schools is severely limited and quite cramped.

During the Christmas vacation, I talked to my son’s best childhood friend about his school — Carleton College – which I originally suggested that he apply to. (Most people were urging Nathan to apply to Ivy League schools and Berkeley, but he was intrigued by liberal arts colleges.)  Carleton is an elite liberal arts college, but no one Nathan has run into in California has ever heard of it. The exception was a guy with a math PhD from UC Berkeley and his reaction was the kind that Nathan had always wanted. It was something like this:  “Wow, you go to Carleton. That’s an awesome school. I’m totally impressed.” The PhD knew about Nathan’s college because there were Carleton grads in his Berkeley grad program.

3. Don’t worry about what others think.

Nicole and Karen are just going to have to ignore the naysayers. Yes, it would be nice if people had heard of the schools on daughter’s list, but does it really matter? No. What’s important is that the mother and daughter have conducted a thoughtful exploration of their college choices, which should ultimately boost Nicole’s chances of attending a school that she loves and that her parents can better afford.

4. A Californian Attending School in Texas

I’m going to close by sharing the observation of another mother (Linda) who weighed in yesterday, whose daughter is currently a freshman at Texas Christian University, which is one of Nicole’s picks. Rather than just speculating what it would be like for a Californian to attend school in Texas, this mom shares her daughter’s experience:

My daughter chose a private school in Texas and it is the perfect fit. California is the #2 state for admits in all those Texas schools that Karen listed so there are plenty of kids from the coast. Both coasts in fact. She has had more opportunities already as a freshman than she would’ve ever had at USC or a UC, due to size of the freshman class if nothing else. She accepted the Honors College invitation and lives in the Honors dorm. She has a hands-on internship in her major as a freshman! She will graduate with a stellar resume full of academics AND experience — which is essential in this economy.

Additionally, the smaller size of and southern hospitality felt at Texas schools creates a cohesive community full of school spirit that the highly selective California schools couldn’t possibly have due to their diversity and size — if that is important to Karen’s daughter. Yes, USC, UCLA and Berkeley have school spirit, but it is a slice of the student population, not a comprehensive body like it was at those schools when we all attended them. Yes, my daughter is a USC legacy too and already has been approached to transfer but she has no desire. Funny how many California kids we met in Texas had parents who went to USC. For us, attending college at TCU is a match made in heaven.

With crazy amounts of psychic energy being spent on getting teenagers into college, too many students and their parents think getting admitted is the hard part of the college process.  Actually, it’s not. Squeezing as much value out of the college experience once you’re a student is far more important.

Unfortunately, however,  many students are graduating from college without learning much. From a parent’s perspective that’s a lot of wasted money. And, of course, there are serious ramifications for students who have spent their college years living in a Bud Lite commercial.

Here are a pair of  college blog posts that I’ve written in the past about this problem:

Do Undergrads Learn Much in College?

Expecting More Out of College Students

Today I’m  sharing with you a professor’s thoughtful column in The Chronicle of Higher Education that attempts to explain why so many college students seem impervious to learning. While professors should certainly take some of the blame for student underachievement, William Pannapacker, an associate English professor at Hope College in Michigan, explains the harsh realities of educating undergrads in the 21st century.  You can read his column here:

A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part I

I am sharing just three of Pannapacker’s observations:

1. Many students are poorly prepared academically when they arrive in college. With rampant grade inflation, earning “A’s” in high school doesn’t guarantee success in college.

2. Untenured professors don’t want to grade too hard or challenge students too much because they might receive poor students evaluations which could hurt their prospects for tenure. Here is an excerpt of what Pannapacker said:

The common wisdom, for the untenured, at least—whether it is true or not—is to find ways to keep the students happy: Expect little, smile a lot, gesture freely, show movies, praise them constantly, give high marks, bring cookies on evaluation day.

3. Demoralized professors. Professors believe they are unappreciated by non-academics and they are discouraged that they make far less than Americans with comparable educations.

What I found curious is that Pannapacker didn’t blame higher ed’s obsession with research as part of this widespread problem.  I wrote about this reality for my college blog for CBS MoneyWatch a year ago:

Why Don’t Professors Like To Teach?

My Son’s Experience

Make sure that your high school students are truly prepared for college. I’d suggest that if your child’s GPA is far higher than his or her standardized tests, there is a problem. Consider tutoring or possibly community college classes  if the “A’s” your child are getting  are simply because the high school classes are too easy.

Our family followed that advice. My son’s high school — High Tech High — was philosophically opposed to AP classes, which was fine. The charter school, however, required all the students to take the same math courses. Students who were struggling with math along with those who hoped to eventually major in engineering and math all took the same classes, which had to be watered down. Ben was getting easy “A’s,” but under the circumstances the grades were meaningless.

My husband, son and I considered this arrangement a disaster so Ben trotted off in the evenings to take community college math classes for five semesters. My son could not have hacked advanced math in college without these extra classes. Ben, a college sophomore at Beloit College, recently declared himself to be a math and art major with a physics minor.

Read more:

25 Colleges With the Best Professors

25 Colleges With the Worst Professors

College Where Professors Are Easy Graders

Searching for the True Price of a University

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of a workBook, Shrinking the Cost of College.  Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

I have been writing college blog posts recently about teenagers who have arguably been applying to the wrong colleges. (Scroll to the bottom to see my three previous posts.)

All my posts have involved families who required financial aid, but today I’m sharing the plight of a father who is too wealthy to receive need-based help.

Anxious Dad’s Email

Here is the email that I received from the father, who is a financial adviser:

I have a high school senior who applied to Johns Hopkins University and was accepted.  She is also going to play field hockey there.  Being a typical “rose colored” glasses person, I figured we’d get some financial assistance.  I filled out the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE.  The package came back and there was ZERO assistance on there.

I thought the field hockey thing would provide her some backing and consideration but I was wrong.  Additionally I’m usually very good at getting a straight answer from people and for some reason I didn’t from our liaison at JHU.  I can’t believe JHU considers us rich!  Does anyone back there know how expensive it is to live and raise a family in Southern California?

Needless to say, I’m a little discouraged and concerned since it’s such an expensive school.  I know JHU has resources.  I’m very surprised we did not get any assistance. I was wondering what you recommend.

 My Response

I am sorry that your daughter didn’t receive any money from Johns Hopkins, but this is a university that almost never gives money to rich students. If you have a high Expected Family Contribution, which was generated by the PROFILE, your daughter would have had a slim to zero chance of getting any money.

Finding the Answer in the Common Data Set

Okay, so how did I know that Johns Hopkins rarely gives scholarships to well-off students? I looked at John Hopkins’ Common Data Set, which is a valuable document that many schools complete yearly that contains a great deal of information about such things as the institution’s need-based aid, merit awards, acceptance figures, academic profile of freshmen and much more.

Section H of any school’s Common Data Set contains the information on the number of students who apply for financial aid, the number who receive aid and what the typical financial aid package is. In the same section, the Common Data Set also shares whether the school gives merit awards to wealthy students.

Only a handful of wealthy students received money from Johns Hopkins, which reserves its financial awards to  students with demonstrated financial need. Here is the pertinent section of Johns Hopkins’ Common Data Set:

In the 2010-11 school year (latest available),  just 10 freshmen received merit scholarships, which were worth an average of $26,318. To give you a frame of reference, there were 1,241 students in the university’s freshmen class and 551 freshmen received need-based grants. The average need-based grant was $30,791. Doing the math, you can see that the majority of students — 680 – paid full price. Like a lot of highly prestigious East Coast schools, Johns Hopkins is crawling with rich kids, whose parents are footing the entire bill.

Almost all schools in this country award merit scholarships to rich students, but a few highly prestigious ones don’t give awards to these teenagers or they dispense just a few token scholarships.  Johns Hopkins belongs in this category. Schools like all the Ivies and the very top liberal arts colleges don’t have to hand out merit money to wealthy teenagers because they institutions enjoy such high perches in US News & World Report’s college rankings that rich students flock to them without any carrots.

What About the Other Schools?

In responding to the dad’s email I suggested that there could be other schools on his daughter’s list that do give wealthy students merit money. Unfortunately, the two additional schools that he mentioned — MIT and Tufts University — are in the same category at Johns Hopkins.

Another way that you can research a school’s financial aid practices is to look at the institution’s profile on the College Board’s website. Click on the school’s  Cost and Financial Aid link. Here is the link to MIT. You’ll find the pertinent statistic for the dad on the second-to-last line that says average non-need-based aid. In MIT’s case it says not reported. Whenever you see not reported that simply means no merit awards for rich kids.

When I checked Tufts University’s financial aid stats on the College Board, I saw that the average non-need based aid was $500. That’s essentially nothing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Tufts’ Common Data Set, which is irritating, but some schools don’t release it.

Bottom Line:

It’s always important to research the financial aid practices of schools before applying. Don’t make any assumptions.

Here are more posts on applying to the wrong schools when money is an issue:

Applying to the Wrong Universities

Another Dreadful College List

Catholic Universities and Yet Another Botched College List

ynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller,  and a financial aid workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College: Great Ways to Cut the Price of a Bachelor’s Degree.