The 8 Best Ways Parents Can Offer College Admissions Help

Last Updated on May 18, 2022 by Jill Schwitzgebel

I’ve said before that not everyone needs to hire a college admissions consultant.  I stand by that.  The information you need to know is all out there (even on this website) for those families that want to save some money and are willing to do the work themselves.  But sometimes, the challenge is actually that once involved, parents want to provide a little too much college admissions help.  This especially seems to happen when it’s time to actually begin working on the actual college applications.

So, here is my advice about some productive ways for parents to help leading up to that fall of their student’s senior year, as well as at application time, without taking over.

1.  Talk About College

Begin talking about college organically.  Don’t make it a topic that suddenly comes up when your student is a rising junior in high school.  Hopefully, before that point, it’s been part of an ongoing

conversation.  For instance, are you vacationing in Williamsburg when your child is just finishing up 6th or 7th grade?  While you’re there, why not stroll over to the College of William and Mary just to look around at a college campus?  No stress for anyone, no official tour or anything, but it gives your child a view of what a college campus looks like and it can spark conversation.  It’s easy to do this when you’re visiting anywhere, even locally.

As your child gets older, and they’re finishing up eighth or ninth grade, you may want to make these visits just a little more intentional.  It’s probably time to talk about what they like or don’t like as you’re walking around on campus.

2.  Read!

There are tons of books about college admissions.  Some are better than others.  A couple of really terrific ones have been published just in the last couple of years.  Again, please don’t wait until your student’s junior year to begin reading – you’ll be much better off if you start thinking about it as early as their freshman year of high school.  Ask any parent of a senior and they’ll tell you that time flies in high school and you’ve got less time than you think.

Beyond books, there are tons of websites like this one, full of articles that should answer just about any question you have about the whole college admissions experience.

3.  Don’t Wait

Often, parents wait for their teen to bring up college admissions topics – please don’t.  There are certainly some who might say, “I think it’s time for me to take the SAT or ACT for a baseline score.”  But, those students are rare.  Especially if they are the oldest sibling, they likely have no idea what steps they need to take or when to begin taking them.  They are not likely to show initiative and ask to go visit various colleges – it’s quite possible they don’t even know that’s a thing that people do!

Also, don’t wait for your high school to tell you what to do.  Some schools are great and proactive and begin the conversation early.  But just as many may not mention it until the middle of the high school junior year.  And if you wait that long to begin, you’re likely to have a much more stressful experience.

4.  Develop a Timeline

Teens notoriously are not great planners, as that part of their brains is not yet fully developed, particularly earlier in high school. (Any parent who has lived through a group of 14 year olds trying to make plans to go see a movie can vouch for this!)  So there are two timelines that they might appreciate help with.  First, there is the long range timeline of the whole admissions process – when to take entrance exams, when to do college visits, etc.  And then, separately, there is the timeline that they will need at application time – when to ask for teacher recommendations, when applications are due, etc.  If you’re feeling helpless about how to support them during that early part of senior year, it’s my experience that many students actually appreciate it if their parents can make them a spreadsheet of what’s due and when.

5.  Schedule Tests and Visits – Together

You can assign your teen the task of going online to register to take the ACT, but are they the kind of kid that will consider that they probably won’t perform their best the morning after Homecoming?  You may want to point that out to them.  You can have them go to the college website to do the actual scheduling of a visit, but it’s a rare teen who has a complete grasp of the entire family’s calendar and can coordinate a visit, or even a week of visits.  So, usually, you will need to sit down with them to plan your calendars and go over dates.

6.  Brainstorm

So you’ve discovered that your teen absolutely loved their visit to the small liberal arts college near you?  But, after some research, you both realize that they aren’t likely to give you the tuition discount you need.  Now is the time to do some “educated brainstorming” to figure out what they liked the most and help them come up with colleges that may be similar, but more affordable.

Or, maybe it’s time for them to begin working on their college application essay.  There are lots of ways you can help them to brainstorm ideas for topics – they may not always realize what unique experiences they have to share.

7.  Interpret the Application Questions

There are parts of the application that are confusing.  Teens are left wondering whether it’s okay to leave certain sections blank, whether they should waive their FERPA rights, and what grading scale they should select.  You may not know the answers either, but there is no harm in Googling and talking that through together.  But, let them work on it first – they are usually pretty resourceful on their own.

8.  Complete the Financial Aid Applications (FAFSA, CSS Profile)

These are really tough documents for teens to complete.  And a lot of times, families are not totally comfortable giving their teens the information required to complete them accurately.  If there are forms that I’m in favor of a parent completing on behalf of their teens, the FAFSA and/or Profile are the ones!  Especially if you are footing the bill for college, this form is too important to leave teens on their own to complete.

Finally…

I was tempted to add a #9 and suggest that parents could help with applications by proofreading the essay and/or the application itself.  And yes, that can be helpful – as long as you won’t be tempted to do more than proofread for grammatical errors.  Obviously, if there are glaring errors on the application, you need to speak up.  But you risk putting their application at risk if you do too much editing – every admissions officer I have ever spoken to has said that it is usually obvious when parents have completed the application, or especially, written the essay.  Parent voices are just not teen voices.

I think it can be helpful when parents help their student at application time by helping them to make checklists and set deadlines upfront.  But, problems may arise when teens get busy or are ignoring that timeline, and parents take over the tasks that need to be completed.  The application process is a time when students can learn lots of skills, and if you step in, they’re not learning them.