Go Your Own Way: 7 Student-Centered Paths to the Best College Experience offers much needed encouragement and ideas for parents (guides, counselors, and other supporters) during an important time of life. Through stories and practical counsel the author dispels myths and gives direction for the college application process. 

Alex Ellison, an education consultant, brings her expertise, experience, and research to bear in this organized and well written book. The structure around archetypes is useful, while the real life stories provide inspiration and a lens to understand more about your young adult. Throughout, Ellison provides counsel and directly addresses misguided motivations and misinformation about college acceptance rates, student expectations, skill sets, goals, values, happiness, parent’s fears, and more. 

Ellison focuses so much on encouraging stories and what we can do that this book is a joy to engage with. She succeeds in counseling parents and others to support young people as they make their way in the world, learning resilience and life skills alongside college education. Ellison’s care for people and her expertise provide much comfort to me, as a mom, a former employer, and a community member. Our future is in good hands with leaders like Ellison. 

I enjoyed this book so much, especially Ellison’s ability to focus on possibilities for students, truly seeing them. I highly recommend parents read it early in the process and wish I had read it a year ago when I bought it. A few times as I read, I thought “uh oh, she’s talking about me” when she highlighted a parent’s unintentional misstep. Yet, as parents, we need to hear these things, at least I did. Our daughter, a high school Senior, is currently working on the college application process with Ellison and her team so we have seen her application of ideas in the book first hand.