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★★★★★ 5
Permission to Help My Child Find Joy
Format: Hardcover
As a parent starting the college search process, I've really come to appreciate Jeff's insights in his previous books, podcast and newsletter. So pleased to finally have this book at my disposal, and less than a month in, it's already dog-eared and marked up!
Like most parents out there, I'm fighting my own internal inertia to align my child's accomplishments against the "metrics" (real or imagined) of admission, and gravitating towards the big names. If you are in that stage, I'll say from personal experience that now is a great time to pick up this book. It's a quick read (for someone who's not a "reader"), and it plants the right questions and data in your head to open your perspective.
Its funny, every good parent I know just wants their kid to be happy, to find their joy in life. When it comes down to it, our only equating of big name to their happiness comes a derivation that success brings happiness, and big school brings success. As Jeff suggests, this book doesn't say DON'T seek the big name... It just gives permission to look more broadly, that the same success, and perhaps even greater happiness, can be found elsewhere. Now we just need need to make sure our kids see that too, and they are empowered to seek their joy with our full support.
There is still data in here that confirms name schools do convey certain advantages. Whether those advantages align with a child's success and happiness is the question we can chase in this process. I, for one, really appreciate Jeff's efforts to make the case for the broader search and taking the time to do it with excellent, fresh analysis of the data in hand. Maybe this book and others generate the momentum to continuing these unique data streams to break the US News/Naviance overload of the process.
Good luck to everyone in a similar boat, and I hope you find this as useful a reference as I did.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2025
