Children and adolescents are faced with developmental tasks at many points as they grow up, but there are a few stages in life when young people meet multiple challenges all at once. The transition from high school to college is one of those critical developmental periods. It is an exciting time that typically leads to considerable gains in maturity, but it is also a time during which many adolescents experience difficulties. This transition is an important event for families as well, because the family unit must navigate significant changes in relationships between family members. Again, although most families manage the transition well, it is quite common that they experience difficulties along the way. List of challenges young people encounter as they make …show more content…
The adolescent encounters the question “Who am I?” in many different forms, from “What academic areas do I care most about?” to “What kind of social environment is the best match for me?” Another set of challenges bundled into choosing a college concerns the adolescent’s changing relationships with his or her family. All sorts of feelings come into play for young people and their families around the question of whether to live at home while attending college or to go away to school (and, if so, how far away?). Typically, choosing a college also poses difficult questions about finances for adolescents and their families, including what parents can and cannot provide and what financial responsibilities the student will have to assume. List of challenges for students in their freshman year in college is remarkably long (see Clark, 2005). To name just a few, in their first year at college students must negotiate: a new level and kinds of academic demands (e.g., large lecture classes in huge auditoriums, large-scale projects rather than