Top Tips for a Less Stressful College Application Process
By DC College Counseling
The college process can be overwhelming. If you’re reading this post, you probably know that already! Parents want to spend their children’s last couple of years at home enjoying time with one another… but all too often, nagging and stress about applying to college can get in the way. We have helped hundreds of families navigate through this time, and are here to offer some of our top tips for keeping your stress level down and family relationships intact!
1. Start Early
We can’t emphasize this enough! The one thing that is guaranteed to raise parent and student stress levels is rushing to get an application submitted by the deadline. At DC College Counseling, we require that our students have every application submitted a minimum of two weeks before the deadline, and most of our students actually click submit months before! https://www.dccollegecounseling.com/
If you are the parent of a junior or senior, welcome to the active part of their college admissions process! Juniors should be spending the next couple of months thinking critically about their extracurricular profiles, building their college lists, and taking advantage of those fall and winter breaks to complete college visits. After the holidays, essay work can begin! Winter and spring should involve the completion of the main college essay, initial supplemental essay work, and the compilation of content for counselor and teacher letters of recommendation.
The earlier juniors start, the more they can stretch out this work over a longer period of time. Nothing will seem particularly overwhelming this way, and everything will be done before senior year begins - eliminating the need to juggle senior-level coursework alongside college essays!
If you already have a senior and haven’t gotten very far in the process, don’t panic! Keep reading for more tips that can help your family keep the stress levels at bay.
2. Stay Organized
If you are working with an independent consultant or a dedicated school counselor, you may already have an organizational system in place to keep track of your applications (we use Asana with our students, which you can read more about on our blog). But if you are tackling this process as a family, it is critical to make sure that everyone is on the same page throughout the process. Staying organized and knowing all of the deadlines and components for each application is crucial to maintaining your sanity!
One actionable tip is to maintain one list that you can update in real time. An app like Asana or Trello can work well for this, but even a Google Sheet that both parents and students can access will work wonders here!
On a related note, it is vitally important for your student to do their research about which application components each of their schools require and when. There could be “hidden” essays that they don’t immediately see on the Common Application, or earlier deadlines for scholarship consideration that are not widely advertised. Their organizational system is only as good as the information they have, so make sure they keep track of all those deadlines and they won’t sneak up on your family!
3. Balance Your List
Every spring, our inbox fills with panicked emails from parents of seniors whose students have “no options” after admissions decisions come in. This is usually code for a student that has applied to a ton of reaches, with maybe one or two safeties that they haven’t thought too much about, or even ones that they actively do NOT want to attend.
One of the easiest ways to minimize stress is to have a balanced list that is full of schools that will make your student happy! Without a doubt, there are some fantastic, less selective schools that your student might really love to attend, and that will provide a great education.
If you’re wondering whether your student’s list is balanced, ask to see scattergrams on Naviance or Scoir (software that most high schools use to track application data from their own applicants). Parents are often shocked when they see, for example, that no student from their child’s high school has been admitted to Duke in ten years - but wouldn’t you rather know this kind of information in advance?
Doing just a bit more research up front, particularly when it comes to likely and target schools, can give your student a lot of breathing room later in the process. No matter what happens, they will have several options they love!
4. Ask for Help
Depending on your situation, your student probably has varying levels of support when it comes to the college admissions process. Some school counselors have smaller caseloads than others, some families choose to work with an educational consulting firm like ours, and some students have older siblings that just went through the process and can pass on valuable insight. No matter which camp your student falls into, it is important to make sure they have a support system and are seeking help when they need it.
If it fits your budget, bringing in some professional help can ease your stress - whether that is an educational consultant, a test prep tutor, or an essay coach. But there are plenty of free resources, too, that your student can maximize for help with the process. We particularly like the “College Admissions” course from Khan Academy, which walks students through much of what they need to know. If your student is a junior just beginning their search, we also recommend creating an account on the Princeton Review’s website and checking out YouVisit for virtual tours.
No matter who you are, don’t be afraid to ask for help and reach out to others during this time! The college admissions process can be difficult and intense, and you don’t need to go through it alone.
______________________________________________________________________________________
For more tips, check out our Less Stress Parenting webinar on Wednesday, September 29, presented by Illuminos and Staying Ahead of the Game. We hope to see you there!