Here is something that really irritates me about the whole college process:  too many families view it as a game.

Their aim is to get their child into the best school possible. Fair enough, but what’s often overlooked is making sure that teenagers are well prepared for whatever college they end up at. Too many parents assume that their children will do well in college because their high school grade point averages look good. Considering that most high school students have a 3.0 GPA or higher, however, grades are fairly meaningless.

The annual college readiness statistics from the ACT organization shows that I’m not off base here. In 2010, only 24% of high school graduates, who took the ACT, met the college readiness benchmarks in English, Reading, Math, and Science. Not surprisingly, teenagers performed the worst in math and science.

According to the academics who wrote this recent blockbuster book, Academically Adrift, students who are well-prepared for college not only do better when they get to college, but they improve markedly while they’re there.

Studying Math in the Summer

I am bringing this up today because of one of my son’s projects this summer.  Via Skype, Ben is hoping to help his nephew Matt in St. Louis boost his previously low math score when he retakes the ACT test in June. Ben, who is a math major/physics minor at Beloit College, plans to help his cousin throughout the summer with his math and science.  Since the ACT tests what students should know in high school, all this work should make Matt a better prepared student when he does start college in the fall of 2012.

When Ben was in high school he also spent part of his summers working on math. Ben easily earned “A’s” in his high school math classes, but the grades didn’t impress him, his father or me. We all believed that his high school math classes weren’t rigorous enough to prepare him for high-level college math so Ben took five math courses at our local community college during his junior and senior year in high school, including summers. Ben started at Beloit College by taking Calculus II and Linear Algebra and while the classes were extremely challenging, he survived his first year and he’s eager for more math. I’d consider that a success.

What Are You Waiting For?

So what’s the bottom line here? Summer is the perfect time for teenagers to get help with their academics. Luckily, there are many resources out there. You can find online classes, tutors through Craigslist and there’s that favorite tutor of Bill Gates whom I wrote about recently.

Don’t waste your summer!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and a workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College. She also blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.

A teenage girl tried to hold back the tears when I told her that she would probably have to attend a community college before transferring to a four-year school. She’s a high school senior and her GPA is 2.0.

Of course, this girl is more than a test score or a GPA. She loves to write and is a staff writer on a student magazine. She holds leadership positions at her school. But she’s got an Achilles’ heel. It’s math. She has flunked some math classes.

I told her that I could totally relate to her predicament. I was lousy at math in high school and I too enjoyed writing. When I arrived at college, my GPA jumped because I no longer had to take any math classes. The furthest I ever got in high school was Algebra II and it was excruciating.

It was hard for her because her twin brother, with a significantly higher GPA, enjoyed far more options than she did. She was trying to stifle her sniffling with limited success.

I handed the girl a copy of a story that I wrote today for my college blog on CBSMoneyWatch. In recognition of the community college summit held at the White House I wrote this post:

7 Ways to Succeed in Community College

If you know someone who will probably end up at a community college, pass the link along. I truly believe that it’s not where you go to college that matters, but what you do when you get there.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also write a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News.

Yes, there are ways to transfer to great schools — even Ivy League quality — from community colleges.

At the end of their post, I’ve included some of my own posts on transfer students…

Transferring Out of a Community College

Four-year colleges and universities are courting transfer students from community colleges. And they have transfer agreements or articulation agreements to make that move possible.

So what’s a transfer agreement?  Simply put, it’s a contract between partnering schools that allow qualified students to transfer course credits, but most transfer agreements do more than that. A transfer agreement can be a ticket to a four-year institution. Many transfer agreements tell students at a particular community college what they need to do to transfer over to a partnering four-year school. Here’s what many agreements include:

• The courses you must take before transferring
• The number of units you must complete to transfer
• The minimum GPA required
• Other specific requirements for certain majors

How can a transfer agreement help you? If you’re a community college student, provided that you’ve completed all the requirements under the agreement, you’ll be given priority consideration for admission to selected colleges and universities. In some cases, fulfilling a transfer agreement gets you guaranteed admission to a partnering four-year school. For example, the Virginia Community College System has transfer agreements guaranteeing admission to the University of Virginia’s College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Once you’re in, you can finish courses towards your bachelor’s degree and you’ll graduate with the same degree as everyone else at your university or college. The difference is that you had that first two years or so to explore your options while saving money by paying less tuition at a two-year college.

Transfer agreements differ among schools, so you will need to do a bit of research and talk to a transfer counselor at your college.

Lan Ngo and Chris Goodmacher write advice for prospective and current college transfer students at TheTransferBook.com.

More Reading from TheCollegeSolutionBlog:

Good News for College Transfer Students

Do Transfer Students Succeed in College?

The president-elect of the Arizona Board of Regents, just released a report that urges the state’s three public universities — University of Arizona, Arizona State and Northern Arizona University — to launch programs that would allow its students to spend three years at an Arizona community college before transferring.

These 3-1 programs would help relieve some of the overcrowding at Arizona’s four-year institutions. It would also shrink the cost of a bachelor’s degree. Tuition at Arizona community colleges is $2,200 versus around $6,800 at the state universities, which doesn’t count the bigger room-and-board expense.

According to the plan, the universities would only offer a 3-1 option to a few highly popular majors, such as education.

This Arizona proposal is part of a trend to keep students in community colleges longer as they work towards a bachelor’s degree. For instance, Miami Dade College, which is the largest institution of higher learning in the country,  happens to be a community college, but it is now offering a variety of low-cost bachelor’s degrees including those in law enforcement.

I think you will see more and more of this happening across the country as college costs makes the traditional route to a college degree impossible for many families.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also write a college blog at CBSMoneyWatch.com.

Here are some of the latest college admission findings from the National Association of College Admission Counseling:

More students will be attending community colleges this fall. Sixty three percent of public high schools, which participated in NACAC’s survey, said more of its seniors selected community colleges this year. About 21% of private high schools saw an increase in two-year enrollment among its graduates.

Seniors at public schools also were more likely to end up at state universities this year (65% increase), and so were private school students (56%).

A huge number of public high schools (76%) and private schools (68%) said that a greater number of their students decided to forego attending their “dream” college.

About 25% of public high schools reported that there was an increase in students delaying college. The number was 8% for private high schools.

All rather glum news.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and a college blogger at CBSMoneyWatch.com.