How the College Admissions Process Affects Family Relationships

At Top Tier Admissions, we believe in supporting the whole student. Prioritizing mental well-being is crucial for students to thrive academically, emotionally, and personally. In our new blog series, we are providing the TTA community with resources on the critical intersection of mental health and college admissions, diving deep into the challenges faced by students and their families during this pivotal phase of life. Through a series of interviews with leading experts, psychologists, and teen coaches, we will provide valuable insights, evidence-based strategies, and practical advice to help students and parents navigate the complex landscape of college admissions while prioritizing mental health.

First up, Part 1 of our conversation with Dr. Dana Dorfman! Dr. Dorfman has 30 years of clinical practice experience treating children, adolescents, parents and adults. As a passionate advocate of mental health, she’s a public speaker, workshop facilitator, and consultant working with schools, parenting centers, and mental health organizations. 

How has achievement culture and teenage anxiety changed post-pandemic?

The pandemic has changed the culture significantly, though we have yet to see the long-term impact.  Learning loss, changes in standardized tests and the undeniable reality of future uncertainties, have changed the emotional and practical landscape.

My sense is that the many emotional challenges of adolescence that had been “brewing” beneath the surface, emerged during the pandemic. Mental health is receiving unavoidable attention and universal recognition.  Teens, parents, schools and the government are becoming more well versed in the importance of expansion of adolescent mental health support. Ideally, this will mitigate its stigmatization and make it more widely accessible and integrated into the educational and familial systems.  Mental health conversations are gradually becoming normalized.  It has become more widely accepted that emotions are an integral part of our well-being and that they impact achievement. This expanding perspective promotes a more holistic view of teens. Ideally, this raised awareness will benefit our teens and the subsequent generations.    

In your book, When Worry Works: How to Harness Your Parenting Stress and Guide Your Teen to Success, you talk about “parental achievement anxiety.” Can you explain what this means and some of the ways parents inadvertently and unknowingly exacerbate teenage anxiety?

Parents are undeniably well intended—they love their children, want “the best” for them, and put great pressure on themselves to ensure that they’ve “done right” by them—to set them up for success.  When asked, every parent I know wants their child to become a happy, fulfilled and self-sufficient adult.  And, as we know, the future is uncertain…Which is anxiety producing!  So parents seek observable, quantifiable benchmarks—like grades, scores and rankings to manage their anxiety. And, these achievement markers are reinforced and encouraged within our highly competitive, productivity-oriented culture!  Unfortunately, as our world has accelerated and the stresses have intensified, our cultural anxiety has followed suit—becoming so toxic and all-consuming that it has neglected and been at the expense of the other critical elements of development—like social and emotional well-being. Yet, because these factors are more difficult to measure or observe, we are less drawn to them as “determining factors” for an uncertain future. So we rely on these observable and quantifiable metrics as means to manage our innate anxieties about the unknowns that lie ahead.

Anxiety is a powerful emotion that operates more of the time than we realize—in adaptive and nonadaptive ways.  It impacts the way that we think and how we behave, and therefore, how we parent! When parents are unaware of their anxiety, it can drive our behaviors and misguide us from our intentions and values.  The more anxious a parent is, the more likely they are to convey this anxiety through their actions and messaging.  Achievement Anxiety manifests in different, yet patterned ways—depending upon a parent’s personal and historical relationship to achievement and their preexisting ways of dealing with their anxiety. 

Here are just a few ways that parents exacerbate kids’ anxiety:

• Focusing on outcomes (like grades, scores, rankings), rather than process.  Research demonstrates that college selectivity is not a reliable predictor of future success. A college fit is!
• Defining or measuring a child’s worth by their performance and productivity; parents may emphasize quantifiable outcomes thereby minimizing the importance of cultivating teens’ curiosities, interest in learning and emotional awareness (which are greater indicators of future success).
• Identifying or considering college admissions as the arbiters of their worth or the predictors of a teen’s future success.  Parents may encourage (pressure) a teen’s involvement in specific activities to “appeal to” college admissions; Parents may set up “getting into college” as the ultimate goal of this leg of parenting (losing sight of the child’s current developmental and emotional needs).  
• Overgeneralizing and/or using binary labels which minimize the subtleties and complexities of the teen and their education.  Such terms include “good/bad school”, “best/ worst, high score/ low score, etc.  This all or nothing and black/white thinking is a byproduct and perpetuator of anxiety. 
• Adhering to narrow definitions of “intelligence”; Many parents still subscribe to outdated definitions of intelligence – minimizing the range and expressions of “multiple intelligences” and strengths. 
• Viewing their child’s performance as a reflection of their parenting success; hinging your self worth on your child’s performance.  Our pride in our kids is meaningful, but their pride in themselves and their sense of mastery and competence are more long-lasting motivators toward achievement. 
• Achievement related conversations dominate parent-teen interactions.  The content of our conversations with our kids conveys what is of greatest importance to us.  When academics are the first thing that we mention in the morning, the opener to most conversations, and the predominant topic of discussion, we overlook essential aspects of teens’ overall well-being.
• Taking ownership of or excessively involving themselves in teen’s school work.  It is hard to “let go” and “trust” that our teens are developing the skills that they need to progress.  Try to make this a collaborative process – “How can I support you?” mentality. 

How can the college admissions process affect family relationships? 

The entire family of the college applicant is entering a transitional stage. Essentially, the nest is preparing for a “reorg”—a shifting and reconfiguration of the family constellation. Dynamics shift.

The end of high school marks a significant milestone in the family’s life cycle—parents often view it as the conclusion of a chapter or “leg” of the parenting journey.  Additionally, it’s an expensive, competitive, and highly charged undertaking, so parents naturally have some “anxiety” about it; the stakes seem high.

The anxiety around this time is palpable in classrooms and homes. It is a logistical, financial and emotional process- the time that many view as “when the rubber meets the road.” Students will be evaluated and judged by a discerning admissions team and parents, understandably want their teens to make the best presentation of themselves.  The pressure is on and parents and students feel it!  

Parents consciously and unconsciously view this period as their last bit of influence on their teens—so they want to ensure that they’re sending them from the nest with as many resources as possible.  As a result, parent/ teen involvement ramps up. 

Additionally, parents are charged with a difficult task—managing the teens’ innate developmental tasks of separation and identity formation while guiding them through a labor- intensive process.  Parents’ anxieties, fears and worries are bound to emerge. 

Parents are anxious, teens are anxious and this can become a combustible recipe!  Parents are tempted to impose their own work style habits and anxiety management onto their teens, while the teen is trying to develop or identify their own.  Parents naturally want to offer their life experiences and lessons to the process to mitigate their teens’ discomfort or possible negative feelings.  

STAY TUNED: Next week, in Part 2 of our interview, learn some concrete strategies to use to lessen stress and anxiety for you AND your teen.