College acceptance has become so competitive that today’s parents and students react with anxiety at the thought of beginning a process that can seem so overwhelming. It does not have to be.

Parents are a key support system, but it is crucial that the student be the one to kick into high gear to steer toward his/her chosen goals. Teenagers may balk at the amount of work required in this process, but they have to be the ones to do it for the application to ring true. If the parent is the only one doing the work, it might be time to rethink choices or consider a “gap year.”

Parents can be the greatest help in the role of cheerleader; kids need someone to say “you can do it.” Belief in your child can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, absorb these tips but, for the real implementation, hand them over to the student to get motivated and to finesse those applications with confidence.

Meet your match. Reflect thoughtfully on your own interests and learning styles, then set about finding the best fit for you. Do not force the fit. In this preliminary stage, it is important to keep an open mind, but be realistic and discuss financial parameters and geographic realities with your parents as they can limit your choices.

With the Internet to facilitate your search, the facts are at your fingertips, so do your research. Your high school guidance department has lists of many helpful Web sites for every phase of the search and application process. Testing services offer Web sites such as www.collegeboard.com that provide current information on more than 3,600 colleges, compare profiles for similarities, and project majors and career possibilities. You also should visit the 378-section of your public library to find college guide books that can fill you in on percentages, demographics, Greek life, and programs. Fiske (fiskeguide.com) and “The Insider’s Guide” describe living and social arrangements.

If your school has a college fair, attend and take advantage of the opportunity to talk to the school’s representatives. It is a great advantage to make contact with an individual from the admissions department who recognizes your name and has some concept of you as a real person, not just a number on an application.

Visiting virtually, actually: What do they have to offer you? Set aside spring break of your junior year for college visits, or visit in late August. Just be sure to go when the regular students are there so you will get a true picture of campus life.

Prepare questions ahead and take advantage of opportunities to talk with admissions representatives or university guides. Tour the buildings and grounds. Are they old, new, renovated, wired or WiFi capable? See a dorm room. Visit the library, the part of campus that will be your major concentration (if you know that already), the recreational facilities, and any other areas you might frequent—labs for science majors, for example. Read a copy of the student newspaper. Check out the postings on bulletin boards. Eat the food. Allow plenty of time to stroll through the bookstore, looking also at the student textbook section to get excited about the courses being taught. Sit in on a class.

Breeze-through visits will not give you the true flavor…only the flavor that the admissions office wants you to taste. Look carefully at the school’s programs. It’s fine to be “undecided,” but if you can research a certain major, do so.

Curriculum challenges: What do you have to offer them? Colleges want to see that you have taken the most challenging courses you are capable of handling, that they are all college prep, and that your course of study is beyond the state’s minimum requirements for graduation.

Electives need to supplement, not substitute, for more demanding courses. If you have a particular talent that supports your personal passion, devote time to it in your school schedule. Do not be afraid to take chorus as an elective if your application makes sense by its inclusion, but be wary of taking courses just for fun or to pad your GPA. College representatives in your area know well the difficulty of courses at your school. The most competitive schools would prefer to see an elective, rather than a study hall. Colleges look for consistency in grades. Improvement from 9th grade to 12th grade reflects maturity.

Realistically, however, it is a great idea to do the best you can possibly do your first two years in school to build a high GPA. If challenges presented in the last two years by social changes such as driving and dating and the increased difficulty of upper-level courses cause any slipping, there is some padding in place to soften the fall.

Consider taking AP (advanced placement) classes in your areas of greatest interest or expertise where your performance is likely to be highest, if you fear you might stretch yourself too thin by taking them across the board. AP classes can be a won-derful opportunity to get a jump start on college. There is a fee (about $80) to take each AP exam, although more and more schools are covering that fee for the student. Having AP credit upon matriculation can allow you crucial advantages: early registration, exemptions from certain requirements, and accumulation of college credit (which can help you save on tuition).

The application: narrow the focus. Don’t apply to a long list of schools. Apply to five or six, and treat each college individually.

Successful applications will be customized. Show them that you are their match. This takes time, but yields positive results. If a faculty member has written a book that captured your interest, discuss it in your application. Show them you care enough to delve beneath the surface.
Use this rule for the five to six applications: one or two “safety” schools, two “reality” schools, and one or two “reach” schools. Application timetables vary, so check the options and formulate a checklist of deadlines. “Early Decision” is binding, so be absolutely certain of your choice if you apply early, but try not to have your heart set on one place. Have a viable Plan B in case your first choice does not work out.

Extracting the Unique. Free yourself of others’ expectations and try to get in touch with what it is you love—your passion. What might have made you appear “weird” in the conformist middle-school years now makes you very appealing as a candidate to an admissions committee.

One gifted young man from the University of Virginia remembers being ridiculed for his early passion for musical theatre and the history of drama. That perceived eccentricity, however, gave him the edge in college and, only a few months after graduation, at the age of 23, he landed a job as a musical director for the national tour of a Broadway show.

On the first day of English class I have seniors write an open-ended letter to me on any subject they want. Often, a single line or phrase offers freshness and can be developed into the college essay. One student mentioned an interest in medieval blacksmithing. I told him not to worry for one minute about the subject matter for his college essay—the admissions committee will not have many essays on that!

If you have ever had an experience that made a big impression on you and you can describe it in vivid detail, by all means include it on your brainstorm list, an unstructured list of words, phrases or slice-of-life moments you slap down in stream- of-consciousness fashion to get your best material. If you can make connections from these experiences to qualities colleges value that might demonstrate intellectual curiosity, creativity, compassion, leadership ability, an optimistic outlook, or initiative, you have hit upon a great formula.

If asked, “what is unique about you?” most high school students draw a blank, but each person has something so special to offer—it just has to find its way onto the paper. To loosen up, tell a story aloud and get someone to take dictation. (If you simply cannot think of anything, ask someone who knows you well—a family member or friend—to think back to an instance that captures the way you react to situations). Try to remember any moment you felt a flash of insight about a new experience, an important task you accomplished, a risk you took, a challenge you met, or some lesson you learned after hard work.

What can seem to be the most ridiculous story or most insignificant detail can be the nucleus of an entire admissions essay. Try to tell it with vivid, sensing words that put you back at the scene as specifically as possible. If you are naturally a funny person, go ahead, use humor. Do not, however, try to be funny if it is not your authentic voice. Be yourself. Your right match will love you.

The Early Bird. Stress is greatly reduced for students and parents who put college plans on their radar screens early; say, at the point of entering high school or even before. If that idea seems to put pressure on too soon, think again. If you want to see pressure, observe 12th graders who have never learned to enjoy reading trying to cram vocabulary words for the SAT.

College prep does not start in the schools; it starts in the nursery when parents read to their children, converse with them about their day using interesting vocabulary, and encourage them to express their feelings or tell a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. High school teachers are acutely aware and constantly reminded that they are still merely developing and refining two first-grade skills of paramount importance: reading and writing.

If you are an early bird and are planning academics for the 9th and 10th grades, obtain suggested reading lists and READ, READ, READ. Reading improves your vocabulary and gives you a chance to use that new vocabulary to build, in turn, excellent writing skills. It is a wonderful snowball effect. Vocabulary separates the men from the boys, the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff—it distinguishes your communication skill, which is essential for success in any college major and any job. If your vocabulary skills are not all they could be, you can kill two birds with one stone and check out some of the Kaplan books called “SAT score-raising classics” such as “The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “Frankenstein,” and others, which incorporate SAT vocabulary words that are easily spotted in bold, and so make learning-in-context easier.

Make the most of your summers. Participate in an internship, an interesting or productive program, or work at a summer job and save your money for college. Volunteering for community service is important to show your civic awareness, but again, this needs to be authentic. Don’t just volunteer because you should to get into college. Find something you care about and get involved with that worthwhile cause.

©Paula Brown teaches honors and college-bound English at Douglas Freeman High School in Richmond, VA, where she also has a private college-counseling business.