I am not a parent.

I am not a parent. But, my younger brother is a 17-year-old high school junior who is just starting his college search. Let’s call him “Adam.” Adam has the distinct benefit of entering the college search process with an older sister who is a college admission counselor. But, finding the right fit is a process that is even hard for me to guide him through.

Even though I have a master’s degree in Student Affairs in Higher Education and work with students and families as they apply for admission at Miami, I can’t help but admit that I feel like a fish out of water when we start looking at the list of thousands and thousands of undergraduate institutions where he might spend his collegiate years. He has a few criteria: Division III football, a pre-Physical Therapy program, and not New Hampshire, where he is in school now.

My instinct as an Admission Counselor and a college graduate is to say that these criteria are stupid. Many schools, for example: Miami, have great club football teams that are comparable to Division III football, but he hasn’t really considered that as an option. In addition to that, Adam has only played football for two years; not so long that he should be making a major life choice that centers on it. I can certainly understand that Adam is an athlete and wants to continue playing sports at the highest competitive level that’s possible for him, but there are so many opportunities in college to do that outside of varsity sports!

While it’s great to look at academic programs when making your decision where to attend, I know that the average college student will change majors 2 or 3 times. Even more compelling is the statistic that college graduates will make 5 career changes in their lifetimes! But, my real hang-up with this one is that pre-Physical Therapy programs serve one function: to get students to take the right classes for admission into DPT programs. Any student with a computer can find the requirements for pre-PT and take those classes in college. So, Adam could really go anywhere and be pre-PT!

The last bit of information that we have to work with is that Adam doesn’t want to be in New Hampshire. I am trying to pinpoint why this is a criterion. Is it because he doesn’t like the state? Probably not. More likely, he doesn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere or covered in snow for 6 months. But right now, all I can get is “not New Hampshire.” Well, that crosses a few schools off the list.

One of the hardest things for me to do as a sister is allow Adam to make his own choices. We are lucky to have the resources to visit many different colleges, so Adam can get a feeling about a lot of different schools and narrow his focus that way. In the end, it’s his collegiate career, his future, and his experience to have. I owe it to him to let him work through all of these decisions and arrive at a conclusion about where he will attend. As long as he does it by May 1st, 2012!