10% - 30% of first year students (drop out rates vary by school) don’t return to college for their sophomore year? Here’s what you can do to help your son or daughter make the often difficult emotional and academic transition from high school to college.

1. Watch College: The Big Change DVD video with them, discuss it. The program is all about how to successfully break-in to college. This fast-paced, MTV-style video is loaded with good advice from more than twenty educators and dozens of sophomores, juniors and seniors - students who not only can talk the talk, they’ve walked the walk. Five universities gave a copy to every incoming freshman. It’s that good!
2. Visit our Blog. It focuses on a wide range of financial issues you may not have considered during what is often a busy and frantic senior year of high school. What about car insurance and health insurance? How do you safeguard valuables?
3. Sign up for our Parenting Your College Freshman E-newsletter. It focuses on long-distance parenting and the emotional roller coaster ride parents experience, especially during the first year. From homesickness to crisis phone calls, you’ll face new challenges that will make you fondly recall those bleary-eyed 3am diaper changes of yesteryear.
4. Last, but certainly not least, help us spread the truth: Not everyone is abusing alcohol, smoking pot and generally partying night after night in college. In fact, just the opposite is true. Visit our section on Drinking and Drug Dangers. Research shows that students who get a strong message from their parents are less likely to get involved with alcohol and drug abuse. Yes, they roll their eyes. But the message gets through! See what you can do.

Sources:
Alcohol and Drugs on American College Campuses
CORE Institute University of Southern Illinois

Your First College Year
Higher Education Research Institute UCLA