College Counseling Connecticut: Completing the Common Application

“Jared has still not complete the Common App….”

So I read my e-mail from Jared’s mom.  Jared was a senior at Valley Regional High School in Connecticut and like a large number of students (particularly boys) he had procrastinated parts of the college application process.  The problem was that he was applying to several schools Early Action and one Early Decision and we were in the last week of October.

When I started college counseling years ago, I would usually suggest to parents’ that while I would help them with the big issues: figuring out where to apply (this alone is a chunk of time/energy/work); if and where to apply Early Decision (and Early Action); how to best market themselves; and, of course, how to best write their essays, I was pretty sure that their child could figure out the general data fill-in for the common application.

Now…. I understand.   Much like I hire an accountant to do our taxes – even though I am an attorney by trade and actually enjoy math – because the mundane and headache inducing nature of tax forms create for me a highly unusual state of procrastination, most teen need some help to complete the Common Application even though they are capable of doing so themselves.