Congratulations - your high school student has walked across the stage, received their degree and has already been accepted to a great college. This fall, they will head off to college and your job is done, right? Wrong.

In order to ensure your son or daughter doesn’t end up in the 50 percent of students who drop out or fail out of college, you have a lot of work to do this summer. Your mission, should you choose to accept it — and you’d better considering the costs of college these days — is to prepare your student for today’s challenging college environment.

Here are seven summer strategies you must follow to set your student up for success in college:

1. Tone down the rah-rah and get real. Many parents make the fatal mistake of telling their students that college will be the best time of their lives and that it will be “easy” for them to succeed. Regardless of how nostalgic you are for your college glory days, you should know that college today is nothing like you remember it. Drinking, drugs and sex are still the big issues, but that's about the only similarity between your college experience and the experience your students will have. Today's students face more peer pressure because they're more connected; they work more (60 percent have a job); they owe more (two-thirds of students carry a debt load of $20,000); they worry more (50 percent have been depressed, 20 percent contemplate suicide); they study differently (do YOU know what a college exam even looks like these days?); and they are surrounded by more “toxic” people (31 percent of college students meet the criteria for alcohol abuse, and 66 percent of students will be sexually harassed by their peers). As a parent, set expectations that college will be challenging and require a lot of maturity and strength. Nearly 20 percent of students who drop out do so because college “didn’t meet their expectations,” so be clear about what your student have to deal with in school. And no matter what, don’t tell your student that college will be “easy” or else they will be less likely to reach out to you when times are tough.
2.  Keep saving and searching for scholarships. The average price of attendance for a full-time student is $15,100 at public four-year institutions, and $29,500 at private, not-for-profit, four-year institutions. That means a four year college degree will cost you anywhere from $30,200 to $118,000. The problem is that most parents only plan for four years of college. The truth, though, is that only 37 percent of students receive a B.A. in four years—the rest, 63 percent, take almost six years to get their degree. The extra two years will cost them (i.e. you) on average $30,200-$58,052. That’s why you should continue saving money throughout your son or daughter’s college career. It’s also why you should insist that they apply for several scholarships a month this summer and that they keep up that habit throughout school.
3. Make ‘em work. Make sure your son or daughter has a job this summer. A summer job does three things for students. First, it helps them appreciate the value of money, which they’ll be spending a lot of soon. Second, it puts them on a schedule, teaching them time management skills for school, and helping them get out of bed for that 8:00 am class in the fall. Third, it prepares them for what’s coming — 60 percent of students will work in college.
4. Get them a — gasp! —credit card. If your child doesn’t already have a credit card, now is the time to get them one. Why? Simple: either you help them select a credit card and teach them to use it, or the cute, application-and-free-t-shirt donning intern in the student union does. The average student graduates with over $4,000 in credit card debt, so start teaching them how to use credit responsibly now before it’s too late.
5. Host Homemaking 101. Every self-respecting student should know how to avoid turning a white shirt pale red and how to cook a good meal in the microwave in under three minutes. Spend the summer teaching your student a crash course on homemaking 101, and they won’t be helpless when you’re no longer waiting on them hand and foot around the house.
6. Study hard (Yes, you!). This is related to the first point, but it’s worth emphasizing. It’s a given that your student is going to be confused and anxious about what awaits them at college, so you shouldn’t be. The average American reads only three books a year—make sure that between The Da Vinci Code and The Debutante Divorcee one of yours is on how to be a good parent to college students. You should be able to pass the exam question, “What exactly will your student be facing in college emotionally, socially, academically, and financially, and how can I help?”

As you can see, the summer before college is a critical time to set expectations, to discuss money, and to teach your student how to become an independent adult. Focus on the six strategies above and your student will be much more likely to make it through their first year of college. Who knows, if you get this right, maybe one day they’ll be as nostalgic as you are about their own college experience.