4 Crucial Ways to Prepare Your Child for Collegemyredkite.com /blog/4-crucial-ways-to-prepare-your-child-for-college/

As a parent, nothing makes you more proud than helping to prepare yourchild for college.

Knowing your child is preparing for college and, more importantly, adulthood, is veryrewarding. All of your love and support is starting to pay off, but you know there is still alot to do.

Prepare Your Child for Entering College

Hopefully by now you and your teen have been discussing and researching collegeoptions and have set a few goals. There is a lot to think about. Will your teen moveaway to attend college, or stay closer to home? Either way, summer is a great time toset up college tours to get a feel for campus life. Applying for college admissions beforesenior year of high school could prevent future stress and allow for a smoother senioryear.

Prepare Your Child for College Academics

Enroll your child in college-level courses and schedule standardized tests as early aspossible. Summer classes are available at most community colleges. Your child couldeven get college and/or high school credit. Remember that college entrance examssuch as SAT and ACT can be taken several times to garner a better score, plus itmakes great practice. Talk to your teen’s high school guidance counselor to help pointyou in the right direction. You may also want to look into tutoring or test prep groupssuch as The Princeton Review.

Prepare Your Child for College Budgeting

Talk to your child about money management. Does your teen know how to balance acheckbook, debit card or manage a credit card? Have you started making dorm roompurchases? (Tip: You may want to start with basics until you see the room.) What areyour expectations? Does your teen need to get a summer job and start a savingsaccount?

The more money your family saves now, the less you may need to borrow later. Whatare the realistic college costs? Most college websites will post the Cost of Attendancewith a breakdown of estimated fees.Here are some expenses to think about:

Tuition and fees related to specific academic programs

Room and board

Books and supplies

Transportation and/or parking

Meals

Personal expenses.

Prepare Your Child for Being Apart

If your child is going away to college, use the coming months to talk about how oftenyou’ll keep in touch, and by what means. Will you check in daily? Weekly? Will you call?Email? Text? Does a Facebook/Instagram post count? If you discover that you havedifferent expectations about communications, the coming summer months are a perfecttime to come up with a plan.

Knowing how to prepare your teenager for college isn’t something that’s going to comenaturally. Do as much research as you can, and keep checking back on the My Red KiteBlog for more tips!