When Coaching Becomes Cheaper Than College

A few years ago I sat across from a family who'd just written a cheque for $11,400. One semester. Books not included.

They didn't blink. They'd been saving for this since their son was seven.

Then I asked them a different question. What had they spent preparing him for it?

Silence.

Not because they hadn't thought about it. Because nobody had ever framed it as something you spend on. College is the line item everyone budgets for. The conversations, the clarity, the actual preparation for what comes after enrollment, that's the bit families assume will just sort itself out.

It usually doesn't.

I've watched this play out more times than I can count. A young person gets in. The family exhales, thinking the hard part is over. Then six months later they're switching majors, or coming home for a semester, or sitting in a lecture hall with no idea why they're there. Getting in is not the same as knowing why you're there.

Here's what many families discover too late. The average semester at a mid-tier university runs somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000 depending on the school.

A focused block of coaching, the kind that actually gets a teen or emerging adult clear on direction, decision-making and what they want from the next four years, usually costs a fraction of that. Sometimes less than the textbooks alone.

That's not a knock on college. It's a question about sequencing.

We've been taught to treat tuition as an investment and coaching as a luxury. One is necessary, the other is optional, that's the story. But tuition without clarity is just an expensive way to find out what someone doesn't want to do. Clarity first is what makes the tuition actually pay off.

I think about this every time a parent hesitates over the cost of a few sessions while writing a five figure check without a second thought. Nobody asked what the tuition was actually buying. Nobody realizes that direction has a price too, and it's usually smaller than they think. Nobody realizes that the "expensive" option is often the one that prevents the far more expensive mistake.

One is a sunk cost if it goes wrong. The other is what makes sure it doesn't.

I think about the mum with the $11,400 check a lot. Not because she made the wrong call. Because nobody had ever shown her there was another one to make alongside it.

If any of this sounds familiar, if you're staring down tuition bills and quietly wondering whether your teen actually knows why they're heading where they're heading, let's have a real conversation about it. Not a pitch. Just a look at what preparation could actually cost you, versus what the lack of it usually does.

DM me the word CLARITY and let's talk it through.