Did Your Teen Ask You to Review Their Application? 5 Ways to Maximize Impact and Minimize Tension

Your teen asked you to read their application. Hooray? Oh no? Whether you are thrilled to (finally!) be called off the bench or intimidated by the high-stakes request, your teen is signaling that they need your support. This is a great opportunity to be a helpful sounding board so they feel confident they’re presenting their best work when they press “submit” this fall. But how best to do that?

If you’re coming in at the pre-final proofreading stage, here are five high-impact ways to help your teen without undermining their process or your relationship:

The Essay: Whether you love it, hate it, or can’t decide (welcome to the great fall tradition of second guessing everything!), avoid suggesting a full rewrite. It’s too late. 

Exception: If the essay raises clear red flags about your teenager’s ability to thrive and positively contribute to a community, then you might gently communicate your concerns so they can consider reworking it. 

(1) Read the essay without expectation or agenda. 

(2) Ask yourself: what have I taken away that is relevant to me, a hypothetical stand-in admissions officer? If it’s not clear, suggest that your teen talk through the intended takeaway and make revisions to more explicitly guide the reader to that conclusion. 

(3) Now consider: Is there at least one recent supporting example? If not, encourage your teen to replace any general language or filler with strong evidence. 

If your first read points to a positive, well-supported, and relevant takeaway, then the essay is probably strong, or at minimum, neutral.

The Activities: After seeing students do dozens of revisions on their personal statements, I am always surprised by how regularly I find a sloppy activities list, i.e. the resume portion of the application. You can help in three ways here: 

(1) Clean it up. Though many teenagers are less acquainted with them, capitalization and punctuation are their friends! The activities list should look as polished as the rest of the application. This signals attention to detail. 

(2) Look for “quantifiables and deliverables.” How much money did that fundraiser generate? How many club members did your teen recruit? If the numbers aren’t there, encourage your teen to add them. Similarly, look for concrete deliverables. Ask your teenager, for example, whether they can replace “Raised awareness about X” with “Hosted panel discussion focused on X.” Understanding scale and scope helps an admissions reader assess impact. 

(3) Make sure they include everything that is relevant to admissions officers and nothing that isn’t. Babysitting gigs throughout high school? Summer job? Include. Traveling with family? JV soccer in freshman year only? Exclude. 

Major Selection: Major matters. Tasked with yielding a balanced class, admissions officers try to anticipate how each candidate will engage with the academic and extracurricular resources at their institution. At schools where students apply to specific majors, their selection can impact their chances as some are more competitive than others (think engineering, life sciences, and business). As a parent, you can help your teen understand this landscape and give their choices more careful thought.

(1) Suggest that your teen reread their application with their intended major in mind. Do they have coursework, extracurriculars, summer experiences, recommendations, and/or test scores that align with their selection? If not, help them research other options.

(2) For each college, encourage your teen to consider what is more important to them: admission to the school or to the program. If they have listed selective majors and are more invested in the former than the latter, encourage them to research whether they are a competitive candidate for that program and reconsider if they’re not.

Pro Tip: In the “future plans” section, encourage them to select consistent career or grad school plans (or just default to “undecided”) that don’t make them look disingenuous. 

Contacts: Many schools track demonstrated interest for the purpose of assessing “probability to yield,” namely an applicant’s likelihood to attend if accepted. Whether they know this or not, most teens skip right over the section where colleges ask how they have learned about their institution. Look through this section for each college, and remind your teen to add (all!) the ways that they have engaged with a school.

Nuts & Bolts: Encourage them to generate a full pdf of their application and proofread, looking for punctuation and capitalization errors as well as typos and strange formatting. Appearance matters, and a nice polished look makes a strong first impression.

Remember: As a parent, you can play an important role in supporting your teen but avoid rewriting or revising the application directly. It’s critical that it still reflects your child’s authentic voice. 

A compelling candidacy is built over several years, rooted in rigorous course choices, strong grades, competitive test scores, and meaningful, sustained and impactful extracurricular engagement. The application is important, but at the end of the day, the results are more about the fundamentals than the packaging.