Excerpt: The Parent Trap

By Hank Herman

Halfway into his eldest son’s junior year of high school, Hank Herman chuckled at the parents who were already anxious about the upcoming college-application process. He assumed they were the extremists, shooting only for the Ivies. But a guidance counselor soon warned the newspaper humor columnist and his wife that the task would “consume” them, too. Several months later, knee-deep in paperwork and updating a “war board” of prospective colleges, the Connecticut resident had to admit the counselor was right—the process was far more complicated, and competitive, than the one he and fellow baby boomers had faced a generation ago. Accept My Kid, Please! A Dad’s Descent Into College Application Hell (Da Capo) recounts an eye-opening, often funny odyssey. One stop along the way: learning to “market” your teenager, in this case as an aspiring education major.

First things first. We realize that the next time our son Matt is asked, during a college interview, what he might major in, he can’t continue to say, “Maybe math, maybe history.” Nor when queried about his prospective career can he blithely speculate that he “might go into business.”

We wonder how other young applicants—particularly the well-coached, superdirected...