Been there, done that, survived and, yes, some of them even bought the college's T-shirt.

That's how it went for the parents we talked to about their role in helping their children tackle one of life's biggest choices: where to attend college. Since all of them had children who were still freshmen when we talked, the college search experience was still quite fresh in their minds.

How did you find a balance between wanting to help your child with their college choice, and letting him or her take responsibility for the decision as well?

Dale: By being a sounding board, knowing that emotionally Nathan was wrestling with a lot. We didn't leave him alone, but encouraged him to talk to us and keep reading college materials. Our whole concept of raising kids was to give them more and more responsibility as they go. By the time he got to this point, he was certainly capable of making the decision. He was pretty sensitive, too. Without us pushing, he was sensitive to what the college cost.

Beth: We encouraged Amber to look for a good Bible college, but we weren't going to force her to go to any particular place.

Dick: We just did a lot of talking with Tiffany, back-and-forth dialogue. We helped her a lot with the financial process by filling out forms, but she initiated the trip to the campus and flew alone for the campus visit. I think it was just a blend of us working together. We were kind of like the chauffeur: We'll drive her to the door, and she will get out and walk inside. We also helped her with the values clarification process. Our daughter is a college athlete, but we were looking for a school that wanted a scholar athlete, not an athlete who was into scholarships. We were also looking for a school that accentuates Christian living, and she was searching for a nursing program. Whitworth was all of these things in one place. It had everything we were looking for. We helped her see that once she had her values clarified, then she could choose a school that accentuates those values.

Joel: We tried to motivate Joshua and help him get serious about looking at schools, but where he went was his decision. The only qualifier was that it needed to fit within the financial framework of what we could do.

Was your child resistant to your guidance and suggestions, or did you feel like he or she leaned on you too much?

Dick: There were times when we felt Tiffany was leaning on us too much. We just continued to tell her that we would help her, but this was her journey. While she would get lazy at a couple of points, we also understood she was under a lot of tension. As a high school senior, there was a lot going on in the last few months.

Dale: He wasn't really resistant at all to our guidance because we didn't present it in a pushy way. He wanted to be independent, so he knew he should do some things like making calls. He didn't want to do it, but he knew he didn't want his mother doing it, so he pushed himself.

Terrie: I don't feel like we faced either one of those problems. Jeremy was very open, a very easy kid to deal with. We were really impressed with the way he handled it.

Was it difficult to get your child motivated at times? If so, how did you do it?

Dale: When it came to applying for scholarships, I don't think he had the same concept of money as we did. He was willing to say, "I'll just borrow and pay it back." But it's worth it to spend some time to get some scholarship aid. So we said, "OK, Nate, you just worked five hours at the shoe store for seven bucks an hour. You could write this essay in one hour and possibly get 250 bucks. It's like getting paid 250 bucks an hour if you just write this." And he started catching on.

Joel: Sometimes we just needed to remind him that deadlines were approaching.

Terrie: If anything, he was overzealous in the process. He is very much a perfectionist, and he wanted everything done and is very considerate of his dad and me. Before I knew what he was doing, he had begun filling out scholarship applications.

Dick: I think it was difficult. We had several discussions about this. She didn't want to write one more essay.

Did you take your child on a campus visit? Did it help?

Joel: Yes, we took a visit, and I think it was very helpful. It helped him get a feel for what the school was trying to do and what its goals were. Just to get the feel of the atmosphere was very important.

Terrie: The visit probably helped him make up his mind. I think Criswell felt like more of a family place because it's smaller and more of what he was looking for. He liked the one-on-one atmosphere. You weren't just another person. You were important.

Dale: On the college visit, I think it's good to get the parent out of the picture for a while, to get your child with other kids. With Eastern, you practically drop the kid off and pick him up later. They kind of allowed Nathan to experience a day at the college.

Dick: I thought the visits helped. At Whitworth, she particularly had a very good experience just walking on the sidewalk and having people greet her. At one of the other campuses she visited, she loved the aesthetics and architecture, but didn't connect greatly with the people like she did at Whitworth. The campus visit was very helpful for her. She could see herself in that setting.

Was geography an issue in the selection process?

Dale: We tried to point out the pros and cons. Since we live in Vermont, I really didn't want him to go to California for school, but it was a possibility. I preferred him staying closer and it would cost more to go away, but the choice was out there for him to go anywhere. The sky was the limit. We weren't limiting him to a Christian college or limiting him to America. We left it up to him. We let him narrow it down.

Dick: I wish Whitworth were closer, especially because she plays ball, and we miss a lot of her games. But she was also looking at Texas, and Texas was a bit far.

Joel: I think geography was an issue, especially for my wife. But we like the fact he is 3 1/2 hours from home as opposed to 6 or 8, like the other two schools he was looking at.

Beth: Probably the most overwhelming thing was just the fact that she was going to go so far away. It's a 16-hour drive. But the location didn't help us decide whether it was a good place to go or not. What the school does and what they teach helped us make the decision. We'd rather have them doing what the Lord called them to do than living close to us just so we could have them nearby.

Terrie: We can see him more than a lot of his high school classmates get to see their parents, but it was hard and it is hard. Just the other day his car broke down, and we weren't there and couldn't be there. But God has placed people very strategically in his life, and he worked it out.

What resources did you use in the process?

Dick: Especially for Tiffany, people were a valued resource. I know there are a lot of organizations that want to help parents and children with the college choice for a fee. But that should not take the place of heavy digging of your own and parental involvement.

Dale: We would ask anyone that we knew, "Do you know anyone who has gone to these certain schools?" The Internet was a big resource as well. (For more on the Net as a resource, see "Where to Find It Online" on page 18.)

Joel: We kind of "Lone Rangered" it. For the most part, we pursued things on our own. Web sites were very helpful.

Terrie: We did not look so much online, other than Jeremy spending a little bit of time with it. We've had several people preach in our church who are affiliated with the college. In fact, the provost came to speak at our church, and he took a lot of time to sit down and talk to Jeremy and answer his questions.

What was the most difficult step of the process?

Dale: Driving away after dropping him off at school. I'm the one who cried, not my wife. And our 8-year-old was crying in the back. Then we all lost it. And the first time we were at the dinner table and he wasn't there—that was hard. He's a lively conversationalist and he laughs a lot. It was quieter. We realized that time is gone forever.

Dick: I would say the financial process, which can be very overwhelming. We had to have some heart-to-hearts with her coach and the financial aid people. I didn't realize you can have a dialogue with the financial aid people, but you really can.

Joel: The month of January. Trying to put together income taxes and federal financial aid forms and all the information you have to get together in the midst of everything else you have to do—your job, caring for your family—I still find that difficult. January has become one of my least favorite months!

Beth: Money. It's very expensive, especially when your husband is the pastor of a small church. The finances for Amber were very difficult. We had to kind of let the Lord convince us over a period of some time that we'd be able to financially secure the way for her to go.

Terrie: As a mother, leaving him there for the first time in his life—that was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. In fact, I begged to go back and get him, but my husband wouldn't let me!

The process can seem overwhelming at times. How did you help your child feel more at peace?

Dale: We prayed a lot!

Dick: I think she felt overwhelmed several different times, and we would just pick up a little more of the slack and talk with her about it. We kind of helped her budget her time through the process.

How did you spiritually lead your child through the process?

Terrie: There was a lot of prayer as a family. It was an awesome thing to watch God lead us through this. I think we all grew spiritually through the process of God leading our child.

Dick: We prayed with her. One of the things we kept holding up to her was that we really think God answers our prayers and works for our future. There was just a really strong sense that God was making a place for her, and if she'd be patient, he'd reveal where that was.

Beth: It was kind of a continual thing to encourage our kids to pray—even early in high school when they knew they would eventually have to make these kinds of decisions. For years, we've encouraged them to pray as they looked ahead to college.

Dale: About six months before he left for college, he asked me if we could get up in the morning and pray together. I don't know if it was specifically to talk about college, but that definitely came up. It was a new experience for us, something we'd never done before.

Joel: We really, really talked a lot about looking where God wanted him to be, believing the doors would open to the school that was best for him. A lot of prayer was put out there.

When it was all said and done, how did you know it was the right choice?

Dick: Probably a great deal of it had to do with Tiffany's response. She loves the school. And I think we have a feeling that all of the work really paid off. Whitworth's school motto is educating the mind and spirit, and we've seen Tiffany grow in both of these areas.

Beth: We've seen many different answers to prayer, showing us that God was controlling the situation and he was working throughout the whole process. And my daughter loves her roommate!

Terrie: The only one I ever felt comfortable with was Criswell. Jeremy has wanted to preach since he was 12, and I knew he could get solid doctrine and theology and grow to be the kind of pastor and person that his dad (a Criswell alum) is by attending the school. I was just very confident that was the place. I couldn't tell him that, because it was his decision. But after a lot of prayer, he came to the same conclusion.

Joel: First of all, I think time alone is going to tell if this was ultimately the right choice. But it just seemed like everything fell into place. The doors opened—from everything he wanted in a school to the financial aid. It all just seemed to fall into place.

Dale: There were some little confirmations. When you drive away from a college visit in the middle of February and the campus is as dead looking as it is ever going to be, and your son says, "That's the place I want to go." That's encouraging. I think I was just more convinced by Nate being convinced.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Campus Life magazine.
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