If they have decided that a given financial or geographical limit is important, they should not give mixed signals. Parents should be quite clear, and to do that they should be aware of what they really want. Such issues may involve finances, distance, religion or academics. Parents tend to study issues differently than their students during the college selection process. Students may be tempted to examine schools where friends plan to attend.
Parents can raise issues such as staff quality, graduation percentages and placement rates.
Jerry Colwell, counselor at Shawnee Mission South High School in Kansas, said many students select schools on the basis of friends' advice or popularity. Parents may wish to see if such schools even offer majors which a student actually seeks. For example, KU does not have home economics yet we'll have students who want to go to KU and think they'll get this or that major. They haven't even looked. Questions about post-graduation successes and services are especially important, starting with job replacement rates and the number of graduates who attend advanced programs.