5 Ways Parents Should (and Shouldn’t) Help With College Apps

Today I am talking to parents about 5 right ways and 5 wrong ways to help your students apply to college. Parents should help students build and winnow down a list of best fit colleges. This is a family decision about where your student will ultimately attend, but parents shouldn’t force their students to apply to colleges they have genuinely no interest in.

Parents should help their students edit their application essays, look over them, catch mistakes, give advice on how to strengthen their story to stand out from other applicants. But parents shouldn’t be writing their essays for them because then the readers won’t get a chance to meet your student and won’t hear their voice.

Parents should help schedule and attend college visits with your students, but parents shouldn’t do all the talking. Students are the ones who will have to spend 4 years there, so students have to ask some questions as well.

Parents should help their students prepare for any admissions interviews offered by the schools you’re applying to. Go over practice questions, make sure they’re ready, but parents shouldn’t try to prep them in the waiting room at the college where the admissions rep can hear you, or try to sit across the table from them, if this is some kind of computer interview, coaching them through their answers.

And most important, parents should look over every application answer before these things are submitted. Help your student with the parts where it’s asking about you, family, parents, et cetera. But parents should not be filling out all of the applications for their students. Think about it like this: if your student is not capable of or not willing to do the work to get into college, are they ready to go away to college? And are you ready to spend between 30-100 thousand dollars a year to have them go to a college that you did all the work to get them into? And if they do go there, are they going to last?

So think about these things when you try to help your students. Help them become capable, independent future college students. And if you have questions, call us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.