Parent - Equipped Career Guide!

Parent - Equipped Career Guide!


Most of the time we parents want to be the best career guide for our children. While we are well aware of the ever-evolving world, how much information do we really have to guide our children? As a grade 12 parent, I’m unearthing so many things as I explore college options for my daughter. I realized that college search and shortlisting should start as early as grade 9. While reflecting on how laid back I’ve been, a big reason being that my daughter entered high school during the pandemic. Tiding through online schooling as a teacher and planning innovative online lessons kept me so busy that I constantly moved the college search to the least important things on my list as according to me it was almost 3 years away. My bad!


Through this experience, I’ve created a timeline 


Step 1: When your child chooses subjects in grade 9 and starts listing possible subjects they’ll choose in grades 11 and 12, start looking for colleges. Talk to the admissions office, find out their requirements, create a Google sheet document them, and start helping your child work towards the requirement. 


Step 2: The portfolio created between Grades 9 and 12 is the only thing that matters during college admission. Enroll in a few extracurricular activities and make sure you do something remarkable at it. Like if you take taekwondo, make sure you earn a few belts. If you are passionate about music and have enrolled in a music class, make sure you are part of some performances and have a recorded album that is published on social media. Plan your four years and stagger the activities in such a way that your academic time isn’t compromised. 


Step 3: By this time hopefully your child is in the latter half of 10th grade and you’ve managed to identify their core strengths and struggles. Start looking for courses that match your child’s strengths. Before shortlisting colleges, shortlist countries that you would like to apply to. Look at the economy and industries and based on what matches your child’s preference, shortlist countries and then shortlist universities in those countries. 


Step 4: The final choice: Now, your child is in grade 11 and needs to choose subjects. Guide them realistically on which subjects suit their preferences and which subjects are just not right based on what you’ve observed in your child’s grades 9 and 10. Also, based on your university search in the past year, guide your child on which subjects are most preferred by universities while admitting candidates for the course your child is interested in enrolling in. 


Step 5: Now, your child is in grade 12. Start talking to colleges again and help your child secure either an early admission or a regular admission. 


Being aware of your child’s strengths and being aware of what is available that will help your child capitalize on those strengths is the biggest milestone we parents will cross, do it with grace and pride. After all, your child is leaving the nest to fly high and probably reach the sky. 

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