Support Teens Actually Want When Starting the College Application Process

[4:00 minutes to read]

The college application process is a major part of every teen’s senior year of High School. If your teen has decided to apply for college you’re probably thrilled about it, want to be as helpful as possible, and do everything you can to make sure they get accepted to a good school and feel good about themselves.

A frequent theme here at Teen Brain Trust (maybe you’ve noticed) is that well-intentioned parents can often make things more difficult for their teens by being over or under-involved (usually over). 

One of the reasons for that is that it’s hard for us to know what to do! We’re anxious, we want to be helpful, and our teens are not great at communicating exactly what they need and when they need it. So, partly to assuage our own anxiety, we roll up our sleeves and get to work doing whatever we think might help. For me, that involves being the problem solver and the ‘fixer’ for my boys (which I’m working on). 

Luckily there are things parents can do to support their teens through the college application process that teens will both welcome AND appreciate. We know because we’ve heard it from real teens!

Back in the spring of 2022, we had a couple of high schoolers (Samantha and Kyla) join us on The HopePunk Parenting Podcast to talk about their experiences with anxiety (including academic anxiety) and how parents can help. 

As rising seniors, they graciously agreed to join us again throughout this year and give us an inside look at what the college application process is like for a modern teen and what they think parents can do to successfully partner with their teens during this process. 

We recently recorded our first episode and in it, they give us parents a rundown of what their parents are doing, what works for them, and what they wish their parents would do instead. We’ve collected that advice here for you.

1). Give your teen space and time to think about their college application and work on it

The college application process is really stressful for teens. They’re stressed out on their own, they’re stressed out because of what their teachers tell them, they’re stressed out because of what they’re friends are doing and saying, and they’re stressed out because they want to make their parents proud.

That’s a lot of stress!

They need time to think and process what they’re going to say in their essays, what colleges they’re interested in, what programs they’re interested in, and how they’re going to fit all their college application work into their schedules. 

So allow them to skip some family activities, spend more time on their own, and be ok with them setting their own pace and schedule.

2). Set a designated time to check in on how it’s going

Both Samantha and Kyla agreed that their parents brought up college and the college application process too often. Their parents would sneak in questions about how it was going during seemingly innocuous family activities like dinner or when out on a walk or in the car.

This, they said, was frustrating, irritating, and unhelpful. 

I was certainly guilty of doing this with both of my first two boys who have gone off to college already but will definitely follow their advice with my third son; currently a rising junior. 

What Samantha and Kyla suggested parents do is set a weekly time where parents can check in with their teens about how the college application process is going and then NOT ask about it throughout the week. That way teens get some more peace of mind AND us parents have a definite time where we can get some of our questions and concerns addressed. 

It’s a win-win!

3). Keep an open mind and ask open-ended questions

Adolescence is a time of exploration. It is developmentally appropriate and healthy for teens to try stuff out and not know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. 

In order for our teens to have the most fruitful college application experience, it’s important that us parents allow them the freedom of not knowing where they want to go, what they want to study, or what career they want after graduation. 

Now, I hear that and say, ‘Well of course I’m going to let my teen decide all that for themselves and on their own time!’. But one thing I took away from my conversation with Samantha and Kyla is that even the questions we ask can seem like we’re leading our teens in one direction or another. Just asking, ‘What do you want to major in?’ puts pressure on teens to know the answer. 

As you may know, I’m a big proponent of asking teens open-ended questions. While it may seem very open ‘What do you want to major in?’ is a closed-ended question because it requires a definitive answer. If you really want to talk to your teen about a subject like that, I suggest reframing the question to something along the lines of ‘What are your thoughts on picking a major?’. That way, the question leaves open the possibility that they might not be ready to pick one at all.