Your Child Doesn’t Know What They Want to Do. Good.

A conversation I have regularly—more often with parents than students—goes something like this: “Sigh. My child is really going to have a hard time applying to college because they just don’t know what they want to do.”

There is a lot packed into that one sentence. And I understand why it worries people. But I want to offer some reassurance, because I believe those parents, while having the very best intentions, are wrong on two important levels.

You’re Not Behind. You’re Normal.

First, let’s be clear about what these families are really saying. They’re not asking whether their student has interests or curiosity or drive. What they mean is: ‘My student doesn’t have a career path. They haven’t declared a major in their head. They haven’t mapped out the next twenty years.’ And somehow, that feels like a problem.

It isn’t. In fact, it’s extraordinarily common. The vast majority of students I work with are in the same boat, and they turn out just fine.

What Colleges Actually Expect

Here’s something important that often gets lost in the anxiety of the application process: colleges don’t expect students to have it all figured out.

Undergraduate education in the United States is built almost entirely on a liberal arts model. Yes, students are increasingly drawn toward pre-professional programs in business, engineering, communications, and film. But even within those programs, the expectation is that growth will happen over time.

Colleges are designed to help students develop. They know that figuring out who you are and what you want to do is a lifelong process. And that means:

An admission officer reading your application is not looking for a 17-year-old with a five-year career plan. They’re looking for a curious, capable person with something genuine to offer.

I saw this firsthand during my years as an admission officer at a highly selective university. The students who impressed us weren’t necessarily the ones with the clearest professional ambitions. They were the ones who showed intellectual energy, self-awareness, and authentic engagement with the world around them.

Not Knowing Is Also Just Fine as a Life Fact

Beyond admission strategy, there’s a simpler truth worth stating: not knowing your career path at 17 is genuinely okay.

I know many people, myself included, who have had multiple careers, moved between fields, and discovered entirely new directions well into adulthood. That kind of flexibility isn’t a liability. For many people, it’s a real strength. The ability to adapt, explore, and grow is exactly what the modern job market rewards.

So when a parent sits across from me worried that their student’s uncertainty is going to derail the whole application, I try to reframe the question entirely. The goal isn’t to manufacture a career narrative. The goal is to help students identify what genuinely interests them right now, and present that honestly and compellingly.

What to Focus on Instead

Rather than worrying about what your student doesn’t know yet, consider what they do know:

• What activities have they chosen freely?
• What subjects make them come alive?
• What do they spend their time on when nobody is watching?

Those are the threads worth pulling.

Admission officers are skilled at recognizing authentic engagement, and a student who can speak honestly about what they care about—even if that doesn’t add up to a declared major—will always make a stronger impression than one who has reverse-engineered a tidy professional story.

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Over many years as an Independent Educational Consultant, I’ve helped students and families reframe their anxieties into strengths. If you’d like to talk through where your student stands, I’d welcome the conversation. Please visit mercered.com/contact to get in touch.