How to help your students set effective goals

Successfully applying to university is by no means an easy task. Receiving a university offer means that a student has effectively achieved a number of small and large goals, through a (hopefully) carefully planned process.

As college counsellors, we are by their sides to cheer them on and monitor their progress in this goal-setting process – life coach is one of the many hats we wear.

University counsellor as effective life coach

But how can one serve as an effective coach? It may be helpful to draw on the literature from the relatively new field of coaching psychology.

Coaching psychology is a field of applied psychology that presents effective ways to apply psychological theories in order to enhance the life experience and work performance of non-clinical populations (as opposed to therapy, which focuses on clinical populations).

Coaching psychology practices are especially helpful for college counselling. As college counsellors, we help students set and achieve many goals. The university application process can be broken down into different goals depending on the time of year, such as finalising a list of schools to apply for in September, writing a personal statement and actually completing an application.

As college counsellors, we work with sophomore or junior students and help them set goals, too – such as choosing and carrying out extracurricular activities that are the right fit, researching summer schools and choosing advanced classes in later years of high school.

Tools of the trade

Given the nature of our job, what are some coaching tools we can use in our practice? Although there are many models and tools in coaching psychology, the following two tools can be applied easily in our practice.

The popular and intuitive SMART framework is useful for choosing effective goals. Then we can draw on the GROW model, in order to expand and check in on the progress of students.

SMART framework for goal setting

SMART is an acronym, standing for the five features of an effective goal: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based.

1. Specific

When goals are specific, they are much easier to meet. Transforming a vague goal such as “applying to universities in the US” to “applying to universities on the West Coast” or “applying to universities with strong writing programmes” or “applying to liberal arts colleges with a neuroscience option” is the necessary first step in guiding students to a right-fit university.

2. Measurable

Measurable goals are effective and quantifiable. For example, deciding on the number of schools to research or apply to (“research 15 schools before our next meeting”) or the word count for a personal essay draft (“write 500 words in response to a Common App essay prompt”) can help the process feel less daunting.

3. Achievable

Ensuring that the goals are achievable is crucial to retaining motivation throughout the process. Educate students about the amount of time and effort different applications take. For instance, US and UK applications require more time than most Canadian and European applications. Subsequently, give students advice based on your knowledge of their capabilities and the resources at their disposal. Taking on too many applications will be deleterious in the long term.

4. Relevant

All goals students set should be relevant to themselves and their values. Check that students are not setting goals based on the desires of others (such as their parents, friends or teachers). Their goals should be for themselves, in line with their ultimate career ambitions.

5. Time-based

Making goals time-based is essential. Setting the next meeting in which you can check in on the goal can be a helpful way to make the goal time-based. For example: “let’s set a goal of writing the first 500-word draft of your personal essay in two weeks. We can set up a short meeting in two weeks’ time, where I can give you feedback.”

GROW model

The acronym GROW stands for stages in a coaching session: grow, reality, options, will do.

At each stage, the coach asks specific questions to the client, which helps them set effective goals and reflect on their progress. The following questions have been adapted to the college counselling context, and are drawn from this source.

1. Goal

Going over the SMART framework fulfils the first stage of the GROW model. Further questions you can ask to refine the goal include:

• What do you want to achieve with your application?
• What is important to you right now with your university goals?
• What areas of the application do you want to work on?
• Describe your perfect university life.

2. Reality

The next stage will involve asking the student to assess their current reality. This stage is especially necessary for managing expectations, and also can be helpful in cultivating self-awareness.

Some effective questions to ask in this stage are:

• Where are you now in relation to your goal?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you with your university application progress?
• What has contributed to your success with activities or applications so far?
• What skills/knowledge/attributes do you have in order to carry out the application or the activity?
• What progress have you made so far?
• What is working well right now in completing your application?

3. Options

This is the stage to explore all possible options. Whether your students are considering universities around the world as a senior or summer schools as lower-year students, these questions can help them move forwards:

• What are your options?
• How have you tackled this or a similar situation before in completing an application for another region/school?
• What could you do differently from your previous application?
• Who do you know who has encountered a similar situation?

4. Will do

Finally, the student needs to commit to specific actions, beyond the possibilities you have discussed in the options stage. Use the following questions to spur them to action:

• What one small step are you going to take now for the next stage of the application?
• What actions will you take?
• When are you going to start?
• How will you know you have been successful?
• How will you ensure that you do it?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed or motivated are you to doing it?

As college counsellors, we help students juggle goals – and we juggle many ourselves as well. The tools existing in the field of coaching psychology can help us to not only be more effective college counsellors for our students, but also to set better goals ourselves.