Competent Adolescents Coping with College Decisions

Abstract

The transition from childhood through adolescence to adult status involves progressively increasing responsibility for decision making and for the formulation of strategies to implement these decisions. One of the major decisions for many individuals in the late adolescent period concerns college: whether to go to college or not, and if so, what college(s) to try for. Moreover, the student is challenged to formulate strategies that will be effective in getting him into the college of his choice and perhaps further challenged to meet a serious disappointment if he is not accepted by a college he wishes to enter. These, then, are siginificant tasks for the student as he nears the end of his high school experience. How are they met? In this report we propose to describe a variety of behavior patterns through which competent students effectively cope with and learn from these