Selecting a college is never an easy task

Many of our recent high school graduates are experiencing new adventures and new challenges as they begin college.

Sending someone off to college never is the work of one month or one season, but seems to drag on for most of the last year of high school, and that's just from the view of the parent. Kids who have the privilege and opportunity to go away to college easily can prove the adage, "Youth is wasted on the young" by not seeing beyond one or two factors in putting together a plan for the next few years of their life.

How to choose a college• Can kids choose alone, or must parents direct and lead, or drag their offspring to the next stage of adulthood• Should kids take a year off and work before settling down to college, as many recommend• The answers are as different as kids themselves. Some kids are born serious; others aren't ready at 18 or even 22. Some want to see the other side of the Atlantic, the continent or the state. Others aren't ready to leave that room, shower or your well-stocked frig.

There may be no one absolutely perfect school, but the country is full of schools absolutely wrong for any given student. Perhaps the best that parents can do is give kids a few questions that they need to answer for themselves, and then listen to how the answers come back.

What do students really feel will be important to them as an adult: income, flexibility, personal input into your job, working with your hands or your head•

What kind of surroundings do you want to live in -- urban, suburban or rural• There are many local colleges, from Duquesne and Pitt to Penn State New Ken campus and Robert Morris that have different physical settings, strengths and course offerings.

Do you need the option of being close enough to come home any weekend you wish• How far do you really want to drive with a van or truck full of belongings?

Is a church affiliation of a school an important factor?

Have you settled for too little in your college choice, being afraid of challenges, or picked an unrealistic goal because of others' expectations• Are you picking a college just because someone you care about is going there, or because it's a family tradition•

The Internet is a good supplement to traditional sources of information from high school counselors, college fairs and personal connections. You can look up information such as program rankings without remembering where you put the magazine reference.

Few families can afford to disregard the cost of tuition, and fewer can rely completely on scholarships to fund college. Even loans available to students are inadequate for the first few years of college. The student himself can only borrow $2,650 for his freshman year, unless he is financially on his own. Parents are expected to foot the majority of the bill, either directly or by borrowing. Community college and part-time jobs are one solution for financial difficulties.

Posted tuition rates are a guide to costs, but merit aid may be available to students with higher test scores or GPAs higher than the average for that school. Sometimes the only way to find out is to apply and see what kind of offer of aid a school makes. Does applying to many schools, then, make more sense than just writing that entrance essay one time• How many applications can you face, and how many times do you need to take your SATs?

Try to visit the schools you are considering. Think hard about making a commitment to a school based only on a catalog, brochure and Web site, unless the idea of marrying a mail-order bride is appealing to you. Actually, you aren't marrying a school; plenty of kids transfer after one year, or even one semester. But a first-hand view is worth the time and effort.

All this valuable advice is not easy to put into practice with teens. Personally, writing one college application essay was enough for me. My son, Rick, decided to go to Duquesne based on their student union and proximity to the Igloo when he was a high school freshman. Nothing I said made him consider another school. Can this last• Predicting is impossible, all we can do is aim them in what we see as the best direction and let them live it themselves.

Trish Grubb of Lower Burrell is a community columnist for the Valley News Dispatch. Her column appears monthly.