College Success Guaranteed 2.0: 5 Rules for Parents - Softcover

Gauld, Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1475810733 ISBN 13: 9781475810738

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014

Synopsis

Teaching for nearly 40 years, Malcolm Gauld has watched thousands of high school graduates head off to college. After a while, he began to notice some unmistakable patterns — good and bad — relating to students after they hit college. About a decade ago, he began giving an annual talk to high school seniors in hopes of sending them off to college on a positive note. This led to the book College Success Guaranteed: 5 Rules to Make it Happen (Rowman Littlefield, 2011).

Since writing the book, many parents have asked for tips on how they might optimize their son or daughter’s college experience. Hence, Malcolm formulated College Success Guaranteed 2.0:5 Rules for Parents, these five simple rules include:

1. Make them pay... for something
2. Wait for their call
3. Step aside... and make way for new mentors
4. Mantra — is this my issue?
5. Get curious

With anecdotes from college parents from over fifty schools, it is his hope that these stories combined with the stories from the 5 Rules for Students, will ensure your child “the best four years of their life.”

Features:

• Five simple, clear-cut rules for parents of college students
• Stories and anecdotes from scores of actual college parents representing over 50 colleges and universities, all offered in a helpful non-judgmental tone
• References to several contemporary authors, psychologists, and family therapists on the nature of today’s American family, the current national tendency toward parental over-protectiveness, and some new approaches parents might take
• A bibliography of relevant books for further reading
• A bonus chapter on how kids and parents might join together to face the troubling angst currently surrounding the annual college application process

About this title

About the Author

Malcolm Gauld, a lifelong teacher, serves as president of the Hyde School, a national community of public and private schools that exist to help parents help kids develop their character and discover their unique potential. He makes his home in Bath, Maine with his wife Laura and their three grown children.

Review

This is a book that you need to buy. If you have children, begin reading College Success Guaranteed 2.0 before your student is college bound. There are tips and stories in this book that can provide helpful insight even before it’s time to fill out college applications. (About Families)

Gauld presents five easy rules to guide parents through the college transition process, presented with anecdotes that help channel a parent's emotional energy into a constructive and healthy direction. As a college consultant, I will ensure that every client gets a copy...required reading for all parents launching their college bound students. (Bobbi Crocker, educational consultant, Crocker College Consulting, Westport, Connecticut)

Through light-hearted yet insightful personal stories and anecdotes, Malcolm Gauld emphasizes the importance of self-reliance as our children transition into young adulthood. Our roles as parents shift dramatically when our sons and daughters head off to college. Gauld’s sage advice for us to lovingly “step aside” will allow our teens to take giant steps forward. Malcolm knows kids and he knows parents, and he practices what he preaches: Be a curious, life-long learner (and live that example well before the chicks fly the coop). This is a must-read for today’s parent whose child is embarking on the college experience. (Cammie Bertram, certified educational planner, founder and president, THE BERTRAM GROUP)

College Success Guaranteed 2.0 is a refreshing and welcome addition to the long list of college guide books. Virtually every parent will relate to at least one of the stories Gauld tells in each chapter. The advice he shares is exactly what today’s parents need to help their children successfully negotiate the travails of college life in the twenty-first century. (Harold M. Wingood, associate vice president, enrollment management, Heritage University, WA)

Today American students and their parents are often accused of using college as a means to delay adult responsibility. After more than 20 years teaching college English, I have indeed seen too many helicopter parents and their unhappy children. These are the parents who factor in on too many decisions that ought to be left up to the student: they tell their children which courses to take; they micro-manage their course work; they tell them which major to choose, even which career to choose. When these same students graduate, their parents wonder why this brilliant young adult is floundering and unhappy. In fact, these over-managed students have failed to acquire the critical thinking skills necessary to their future success. College is not the time to delay developing that all-important real world skill.

In College Success Guaranteed 2.0, a thoughtfully instructive new book, Malcolm Gauld offers this advice — 'step aside' — and so much more. When we step aside, Gauld explains, college students can learn to allow 'obstacles to become opportunities.' Students must learn to TCB: Take care of business. Taking care of business, as he once told a student, is 'doing what you need to do when you need to do it.' Delaying gratification 'when no adult authority figure is on the scene to remind (or make) you do whatever it is that you need to do.'

Malcolm Gauld’s College Success Guaranteed 2.0 is 'life preparation' at its best. After you have dropped your son or daughter off for that big four-year adventure, this is the book you’ll want by your bedside. (Barbara Stuart, lecturer, Department of English, Yale University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1475810733
• ISBN 13: 9781475810738
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 148