Many wealthy parents obsess about getting their kids into a great college, believing it will set them up for life. Drusilla Blackman specializes in helping them achieve that goal.
Blackman, a former dean of admissions at Harvard and later Columbia, is the founder of Deans of Admissions, a group of former admissions executives who advise families on how to land their children at top-flight universities in the US and Britain.
She spoke to Business Insider this week about how wealthy parents can inadvertently sabotage their kids’ chances at a coveted spot in an Ivy League-level institution, and how they can maximize their prospects instead.
Ignore the person next door
Blackman said one of the biggest mistakes that affluent families make is that they “listen to their neighbors.”
Wealthy parents who have “never been inside the process” wrongly believe the couple next door, because they managed to get their kids into an exceptional school, “have the answers that they should apply to their children,” she said.
But no two kids have the same personalities, interests, and abilities, meaning that what worked for one family almost certainly won’t work for another, Blackman said.
Make time for talking
Blackman said the “best piece of advice” she has for affluent parents is to “create as many opportunities as possible just to talk as a family.”
Parents who sit down for meals with their children and carve out quality time with them can learn about their interests, successes, and struggles, and vice versa.
“You’d be amazed at how seen everyone in the family feels over activities like that,” Blackman said.
She also suggested parents take their kids to their workplaces so they can see what they do every day, and learn to appreciate the relationship between work and money.
Kids must learn who they are
Warren Buffett famously advises wealthy parents to give their kids “enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”
Blackman agreed that giving too much money, too soon, to your children is a bad idea, as it can stop them from learning about themselves.
“Success in any field is really a result of knowing yourself inside, how you feel about and respond to situations, and what’s important to you,” Blackman said.
“You cannot know that if everything is given to you. You never take the time to learn those things.”
Blackman said that when she was choosing between two exceptional candidates as a dean of admissions, the deciding factor was often “depth of character.”
She favored candidates who were more self-reflective, more in touch and thoughtful about who they were and who they would become, she said.
Blackman said she rejected many applicants who were “perfect on paper” because they didn’t strike her as real, “just kind of manufactured to seem like ideal candidates.”
“Authenticity counts for a lot,” she said.
Blackman recalled advising a family who wanted their son to attend Harvard, but he wasn’t spending his time doing Model UN or taking part in the kinds of clubs that typically support an Ivy League application.
Instead, he “took great pleasure in composing on the piano,” Blackman said. His parents complained to her that his piano playing wasn’t academic enough and might stop him from getting into Harvard, but Blackman told them that colleges value passions. She recognized that to him, music was a “way for him to communicate what he was feeling inside to others.”
Blackman helped him articulate the importance of his piano playing in essays, and the final result was “moving” and “elegant,” showing who he was as an individual, she said.
“He ultimately wound up at Harvard because of his essay and his piano, and what it taught him,” she said.
Parents don’t always know best
Blackman warned parents not to micromanage their kids’ lives to get them into a certain college, as that approach is often ineffective and can backfire.
She said they shouldn’t decide where they want their child to be in 10 or 20 years, but instead “let that process unfold naturally” and allow them to “be the person they are.”
Moreover, “clamping down on your child” often causes them to rebel and can “sabotage the whole effort,” she said.
The veteran admissions advisor said that hiring a counselor is a superior option. They have “all sorts of resources, insights, understandings about both the process, and eventually the child, that will make everybody more content, that will make the process smoother and more successful,” she said.
They can give tailored advice to parents about opportunities that suit their child’s personality, keep them interested and learning, and set them apart from other candidates when they apply to college, Blackman said.
In cases where a child is being prepared to steward the family fortune one day, a counselor can help them develop the traits and skills they’ll need to take on that responsibility, she said. For example, they might help them find the right mentors and role models to learn what they need to know.
She added that counselors guide not only the child through a process of self-discovery, as they figure out who they are and what’s important to them, but they also help parents to understand their role in the process.
Blackman said the “most successful parents, with the most successful children, are the ones that have allowed their children to follow their heart.”
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