After all the testing and touring and applying, your child has been accepted to college. Congratulations! Now what? Every new student grapples with making a successful transition to college—with remaining healthy, happy, grounded, and in school. Indeed, the national statistics are sobering: One in three freshmen will not come back for sophomore year, and less than 50 percent will graduate on time. A student’s adjustment is key, especially during the period starting with the lazy summer months before move-in and ending at the dizzying close of a student’s first semester. Distilling lessons and sharing stories (some cautionary, some entertaining, all helpful) from her long college advisory career, three-time Ivy League dean Monique Rinere presents a unique month-by-month road map to a college experience that is rich, rewarding, and successful for teens and parents alike. Taking parents from the moment the acceptances arrive to the end of the first college semester, her expert advice covers: • assessing the right fit among your child’s options: who and what to ask to get the real scoop on campus and academic life • understanding actual costs: considering hidden expenses, financial-aid and scholarship fine print, loans, and work-study opportunities • parenting through the senior slump so that students don’t jeopardize their hard-won college spot • talking to your child about freshman culture shock and their new freedoms around parties, food, finances, and sleep • what your child needs to know about working with an academic advisor, interacting with professors, and creating their own community of advisors • how to help your rising freshman create a conceptual bridge from what they are, a graduating high school senior, to what they want to be, a college alum • time-management and class-scheduling tips to help your child pick an appropriate class (and extracurricular) load • advice for parents facing the emptying nest: letting go of your anxieties about your child’s autonomy and seizing this opportunity to reinvent your life in new and intentional ways “A valuable and comprehensive guide for parents of college-bound students . . . The months between high school and college are a critical time, but Dr. Monique Rinere gives you confidence that everything will be all right.”—Marvin Krislov, president, Pace University “A valuable and comprehensive guide for parents of college-bound students . . . The months between high school and college are a critical time, but Dr. Monique Rinere gives you confidence that everything will be all right.” —Marvin Krislov, president, Pace University Monique Rinere was a first-generation college student, earning her B.A. from Hunter College and then her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. She was a residential college dean at Princeton and the dean of advising for Columbia, and she founded the advising programs office at Harvard University. She is now the associate vice president of The New School, leading academic advising, career development, academic integrity, and student health services, among other student-centered initiatives. She lives in New York City. Part I Choosing Wisely When you make the right decision, it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. —Caroline Kennedy Now that your child has been admitted to three, four, or all of the ten, fifteen, or twenty schools on their list (you would not be alone if this is the number you ended up with), how are they going to decide which offer to accept? Before accepting a spot in the freshman class, there is a whole new set of questions to ask and answers to consider. Sure, since the college application process started, you have been comparing and contrasting one college with another. But now, with the acceptances in hand, a deeper dive will make the final decision as clear and easy as possible. After all, a lot of time has passed since your child began constructing the list of potential schools. Maybe not in terms of the actual number of days that have gone by, but surely in terms of what they have thought about and learned about themselves and the colleges. Students who visit campus on Admitted Student Days always seemed to me years older than the college-touring prospective applicants, as if the process itself had catapulted them into a new level of maturity in record time. This section leads you through a thoughtful consideration of the most important aspects of each school’s offerings, some of which you have probably breezed over in the initial research phase. They fall into two main areas. First and foremost are the financial considerations. Unless you can pay full freight, it is imperative that you have all the information you need to avoid falling into the college debt trap, the pernicious result of what Temple University professor of education Sara Goldrick-Rab calls “the new economics of college in America.” Then you will launch into the ultimate investigation of the essential college