What's Keeping Parents Up at Night and What You Can Do About It

We spend a lot of time thinking about what students are feeling, but we almost never talk about what's happening to their parents.

Every spring, we send surveys. We analyze yield data. We study what moves students from admitted to enrolled — the campus visit, the financial aid package, the counselor relationship, the peer community.

And all of that matters. Students are, after all, the ones signing up. They're the one attending college.

But, there is another person in that decision. Sitting at the kitchen table. Reading your financial aid letter for the fourth time. Googling your institution at midnight when they can't sleep. Trying to figure out if this is the right call; not just for their student, but for their family.

That person is a parent. And in most enrollment marketing strategies, they are a secondary audience at best and an afterthought at worst.

That needs to change. Because what parents are experiencing during yield season is not a minor subplot to the student's story. For many families, it is the whole story.

What Parents Are Going Through During the College Search

Let's name it honestly.

1. There is financial fear. For many families, a college education represents the largest financial commitment they have ever made or will ever make. The number on the financial aid letter is not abstract. It is a mortgage payment. It is retirement savings. It is the question of whether both parents need to take on second jobs, whether siblings' futures will be affected, whether this is a number the family can actually absorb. And yet most parent communication during yield season treat cost as a logistics question — a link to the net price calculator, a reminder to contact the financial aid office. Cost is not a logistics question for these families. It is an emotional one. It is kept alive by a specific and very human anxiety: What if we can't really afford this, and we do it anyway, and it breaks us?

2. There is grief. This one surprises people. But parents sending a child to college — especially for the first time, especially far from home — are often experiencing something that looks a lot like loss. The family structure that has existed for 18 years is about to change, permanently. The day-to-day presence of a child they have raised, worried about, loved fiercely is about to become visits and texts and a room that stays clean. That grief is real. It coexists with pride and excitement. It does not make parents bad or overly attached. It makes them human. And it shapes the decisions they make — and the influence they have on their student's decision — in ways that have nothing to do with rankings or career outcomes.

3. There is the particular anxiety of the first-generation parent. A parent who did not attend college themselves is navigating this process without a map. They do not know what a financial aid package is supposed to look like. They do not know if the gap between the cost of attendance and the aid offered is normal or alarming. They do not know what questions to ask, which means they often ask none — and stay quietly uncertain rather than reveal that they don't understand the system they're being asked to trust. When an institution speaks to this parent in jargon, in institutional shorthand, in language that assumes fluency they don't have — the message underneath the message is: This place wasn't built for families like yours. And that message lands. Even when no one intended to send it.

4. There is the weight of being the decider — or feeling like they shouldn't be. Parents of college-age students are often caught in a particular bind: they have significant influence over a decision that is supposed to belong to their student. Many are trying to balance real financial and logistical concerns with the genuine desire to let their child choose. Some are holding opinions they haven't voiced. Some are carrying concerns — about safety, about distance, about a major that doesn't seem practical — that they haven't fully raised because they don't want to be "that parent."
   

   That tension is invisible to most enrollment communications. But it's there, quietly shaping conversations at home that your team will never be part of.

What We Do Instead — and Why It Falls Short

Most parent communication during yield season falls into one of two categories.

1. The first is logistical: deposit deadlines, housing timelines, orientation registration, next steps checklists. All useful. None of it emotionally intelligent.

   
   

2. The second is institutional: rankings, outcomes data, student success statistics. Also useful. Also not what a parent lying awake at midnight actually needs.

What is almost entirely absent from yield communication is the acknowledgment that...this. is. hard. You need to address that these feelings parents are having — the fear, the grief, the uncertainty, the financial stress — are normal, valid and understood.

We are so focused on answering the question "Why should my student choose us?" that we consistently fail to answer the question parents are actually sitting with: "Can I trust you with my child?"

Those are not the same question. And they require very different answers.

What Parents Actually Need From You

To be seen as a partner, not a barrier.

There is a culture in some enrollment offices — often unspoken, sometimes very spoken — of viewing parents as obstacles to the student's autonomous decision. And I understand where that instinct comes from. Helicopter parenting is real. Parental override of a student's clear preference is a thing that happens.

But most parents are not trying to override their student. They are trying to support them. They are trying to ask the right questions, hold the right concerns, help their student make a decision that will serve them well. That is not interference. That is love — and it is a resource, not a problem.

When your communications treat parents as partners in the decision, they respond accordingly. They share information. They ask questions. They help their student work through hesitation rather than amplify it.

Plain language about money without making them feel judged for asking.

The financial conversation is the one parents most need and least receive in a form they can actually use.

Not a link to the net price calculator. Not a brochure explaining the types of financial aid. A plain-language explanation of what their specific package means. What the gap is. What options exist for closing it. What the actual monthly payment would look like under a payment plan. And — critically — who to call when the numbers are confusing and they don't want to admit they're confused.

That conversation, handled with warmth and without jargon, closes more enrollment gaps than almost any other single intervention. Not because it changes the financial reality. But because it replaces anxiety with clarity, and clarity is what allows families to make a decision and mean it.

Acknowledgment of the emotional reality.

This doesn't have to be elaborate. It doesn't require a separate communication or a special campaign. It can be a single paragraph in a yield email. A moment in an admitted student event. A section of your parent page.

It just has to be honest.

Something like: "We know this is a big decision — not just for your student, but for your whole family. If you have questions, concerns or just want to talk through what you're weighing, we're here for that conversation too."

That sentence does something that a deadline reminder never can: it makes the institution feel trustworthy. And trustworthy institutions get deposits from families who might otherwise have stayed silent, stayed uncertain, and ultimately said no.

The Practical Implications for Your Yield Strategy

If you are in the middle of yield season right now, here are a few things you can do immediately.

• Audit your parent communication for tone. Read everything you've sent to parents in the last six weeks. Does it acknowledge what they might be feeling? Does it invite questions? Does it speak in plain language? Does it treat them as partners or as obstacles? You may be surprised what you find.
  

• Add one human moment to your remaining parent communications. One sentence that names the emotional reality. One explicit invitation to reach out. One message that says, in some form, "We see you, not just your student."
  

• Train your counselors for parent conversations. The call from a worried parent is not a distraction from enrollment work. It is enrollment work. Counselors who know how to navigate those conversations — with empathy, with financial fluency, with patience for questions that may feel basic — are one of your highest-leverage yield tools.
  

• Look at your parent page. If it's a list of links, it's not doing the job. Parents in the late stages of yield season need reassurance, clarity and connection — not a site map.

The Bottom Line

I've said it once and I'll say it again: parents are driving the car of the college search, both figuratively and literally. For many families, they are the primary. They hold financial veto power, emotional influence and the kind of quiet authority that shapes their student's confidence (or doubt) in ways that never show up in your inquiry data.

When we build enrollment communications that see, acknowledge and speak to what parents are actually experiencing — the fear, the grief, the financial stress, the desire to get it right — we build something far more powerful than a yield campaign.

We build trust. And trust is what gets students to show up in August and stay through May.

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At Square One Consulting, I help enrollment and marketing teams build strategies that speak to the whole family, not just the student on the application. If your parent communication could be doing more, let's talk.