We hope this book has provided some useful guidance and starting points for having important conversations with your child about their career, education and life goals. We have covered a lot of ground and it may feel overwhelming. Below is a quick summary of the most important points you can bring into your conversations with your child.

1. There isn't a single “best” college or a “hot” career that will make or break your child's future. There are multiple colleges, careers, and pathways in life that fit your child's unique personality, strengths, interests, and needs.
2. Has your child defined “success” for themselves? It's important for your child to reflect honestly on what they want out of work. Do they want a certain kind of day to day experience? Do they want to impact the world in a certain way? Do they want a certain amount of money to fund a specific lifestyle? Help them check these reflections against reality.
3. Think about college and career at the same time. The strategy of getting into the “best college possible” and assuming that the career part will just work itself out is naïve and could end up wasting money and time. A traditional college degree may not be the right direction for certain career goals.
4. Every career field has certain stereotypes and the most popular career fields are often glamorized in the media or portrayed incorrectly on television. Every career comes with certain realities and the only way to get a true sense of them is to get out there and talk to real people in the field or experience it directly through an internship or job shadow. Encourage your child to take these steps before they commit to an expensive course of study.
5. Your child can build more long-term career security by combining direct skills (engineering, coding, accounting) with “superskills” (communication, persuasion, learning, leadership).
6. Statistically speaking, a college degree on average will lead to greater career and financial stability. However, these averages hide extreme differences depending on your child's aptitude for school, their career goals, their financial situation and the cost and quality of the college they might attend. Do your research! There are literally thousands of post-secondary educational options in the United States alone, and they are not all created equal. Use our suggestions for research starting points and consider alternative strategies such as two-year to bachelor's degree transitions.
7. Your child should not be discouraged if they cannot seem to find a “passion”. It may be that the best advice for your child is to go out there and just become good at something. There is a popular idea in our culture that success comes from following a passion or that we just need to find the thing that interests us the most and we will be all set. We have learned over the course of our lives, though, that sometimes passion can come from success. When you discover that you can do something well and be successful at it, that can inspire passion and bring personal joy. Be useful to the world, and it's pretty likely the world will give something good back to you.

Thank you for allowing us to share what we've learned, and thank you for taking the time to consider the critical issues your teenager is facing when choosing among various options for college and career. We wish you and your child the best of luck!