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The college admissions journey is more stressful than it’s ever been. Long gone are the days of applying to 1–5 schools, getting into 2 or 3 of them, making a choice, and moving on with life. More students are applying to more schools. Admissions rates at the top 100 most selective schools are falling precipitously, some down as low as 3.9%, and most are down into the single digits. And in the age of social media, where a student’s victories and losses are broadcast not only to their immediate family, but the broader community, including their friends, the stakes feel even higher.

It’s inevitable that navigating this process will cause some friction between parents and students. I hope you will find these books helpful to gain perspective on what the process is like today, and perhaps help everyone understand that admissions is not actually as life-or-death as it may seem.

Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be – by Frank Bruni

I cannot recommend this book enough. Frank Bruni is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times who writes on higher education. In this NYT best seller, he highlights the mania that has come to surround college admissions and tries, armed with anecdotes and data, to illustrate just how illogical it is.

Often laced with good humor, Bruni illustrates how success is less about the name of the school on your diploma and more about the work you put in as an individual. He tells the life stories of CEOs, many of the Fortune 500’s best did not come from the nation’s best schools, and successful college drop-outs.

He also interviewed frustrated “success” stories of students at elite schools, and thriving “failures” at lesser-known universities. Diving into the intense world of New York private schools, he shows just how deep the rabbit hole goes: from the playgrounds of elite pre-schools to the halls of Harvard. In the end, it’s hard not to agree with his thesis: Where you go [to college] is not who you’ll be.

How To Raise An Adult – by Julie Lythcott-Haims

Dr. Lythcott-Haims does a fantastic job in this relatable, humorous book of identifying many of the changes that have happened in the world of parenting over the last thirty years. She uses anecdotes from her own life as a mother in Palo Alto and from friends and family on both coasts. These anecdotes combine with data from her professional life as Dean of Freshmen at Stanford and other academics to identify some of the ways parenting has gone astray.

Lythcott-Haims also talks about the college admissions process and how it has been blown so completely out of proportion. She explores how parental competition for the perceived limited resources of spots at a “good” college has led to what she calls an “arms race” that only harms our relationships with our teens. She identifies some of the reasons why this has happened, and, of course, tries to provide the tools and techniques to help alleviate the stress and anxiety that leads to overparenting so that students can grow up happier, healthier, and more self-sufficient.

Parenting The New Teen In The Age of Anxiety – by Dr. John Duffy

Over the last 30 years, our understanding of the teenage brain has changed and improved dramatically. Teenage brains had been considered almost identical to adult brains until studies over the last several decades began to nuance that understanding. Clinical psychologist Dr. John Duffy explores the ways in which the adolescent brain is fundamentally different from that of a child and of an adult and combine that with the unique social pressures they’re facing.

From social media and the internet to familial stress and, of course, the anxiety that stems from the all-consuming college admissions process, teenagers today are facing unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression. Dr. Duffy lays this out in a clear, understandable way so that parents can adapt their parenting for the 21st century. While it may not be the only book you’ll need (hence the other 4 on this list!), it contains many helpful tips and techniques to help you shepherd your teen to adulthood.

Generation Z Goes To College – by Corey Seemiller and Meghan Grace

While this might be of mixed use to parents, it’s one of the first books that analyzes Generation Z (1995–2010) using surveys of over 1,100 students from 15 different colleges around the country. Learn about their values, habits, goals, and experiences that have informed the upbringing of this next generation of students. Unlike Millennials, who hit their teens and young adulthood in a post-9/11 world and graduated from college into the Great Recession, Gen Z grew up in that recession and are hitting their teenage years and young adulthood through COVID-19. Their priorities are vastly different from those who came before, and they weren’t told the same stories about the invaluable nature of college. By the time they were young, college was incredibly expensive, so they see it as an already-expensive investment they must weigh against other interests.

This book will help you understand what motivates this new generation of students, which can aid in our understanding their choices and actions as they transition to their teens and adulthood.

The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide To Raising Adolescents and Young Adults – by Frances E. Jensen, MD, and Amy Nutt

While Gen Z Goes To College will bolster your understanding of this generation in particular, The Teenage Brain will explain the last twenty years of discoveries neuroscientists have made about teenage brains in general. The author, Dr. Jensen, is the chair of the neurology department at the University of Pennsylvania, a mother, teacher, and researcher. Like Dr. Lythcott-Haims’ How to Raise an Adult, this book combines anecdotes and personal stories with research to not only explain how teenage brains work, but to provide actionable advice for parents that will help them deal with their teenagers in a productive and healthy way. This and Lythcott-Haims’ book pair nicely to provide a well-rounded picture of where we have been as parents, and what’s going on in our teens’ brains, so that we can move into the future with more effective, informed parenting strategies.

Admission Matters – by Sally P. Springer, Jon Reider, and Joyce Vinning Morgan

This is a fantastic resource for parents and students, whether they’re seeking help from a consultant or trying to navigate college admissions independently.

Parents should read this in order to understand how the process has changed since they were in school. Even though you may know that the process is “more competitive” than it was in the past, you may not understand by just how much. This will give parents, and students, some perspective when selecting schools and calibrating their admissions expectations.

It’s also a nice supplement that can give parents some perspective on how the process works from people with experience and connections on the inside, where parents need to step up to help their students, and where they need to let their student take the lead.

Need help guiding your student through admissions and don’t know where to start? Sign up for a free consultation today. We will talk about what you and your student need and tell you how we can help.