The College Counseling Mom Podcast: It’s Fine, I’m Fine, My Kid’s in High School.

Content warning: this episode discusses sexual assault, drug use, and the deaths of two college students. Please take care of yourself. Support resources are listed at the bottom of these notes. Recorded September 29, 2026. News on all three stories was still developing when this episode was recorded. Please check current reporting for the latest. The Conversations We Assume Already Happened It ha...

You have a question about the college process. The answer is probably four minutes away in your kid's school counselor's inbox. And you don't send the email, because you're not sure it's a reasonable thing to ask. Lindsay is a former school counselor with fifteen years of experience in public education. In this episode she walks through what the job actually looks like fro...

Every spring Lindsay gets the same phone call. A kid got in, the family is celebrating, and somebody says "they put him in a different major, but he can just switch, right?" Sometimes that answer is yes and it is no big deal. Sometimes the school has already posted, in writing, that he almost certainly cannot. This episode is about the difference, and about the fact that almost nobody ch...

If your kid won't join anything and you have been quietly spiraling about it since school started, this one is for you. Lindsay takes apart the question underneath the question, the one that is never actually about the activities list, and gives you a real way to tell an introvert from a kid who is struggling. This is the episode where she tells on herself, too. She was a joiner. Her oldest n...

There's a mom in your group chat right now who just said "we're not doing early, we're just doing regular decision," and everybody agreed with her because it sounded like the calm, sensible choice. It isn't a choice at all. It's a default. And it happens to be the one door on the board that got smaller. In this episode I'm walking you through the whiteboard...

If your senior has been revising the same personal statement for three weeks, this one is for you. There is a mountain of advice out there about how to start a college essay and almost none about how to finish one. So families keep going. One more read, one more opinion, one more round of polish, until the essay is smooth and tight and grammatically perfect and does not sound remotely like the kid...

Somebody asked me recently what my system is for building a college list, and my first instinct was to say I don't really have one. That was nonsense. I do. I'd just never said it out loud. So this week I'm saying it out loud, and I'm finally giving it a name. It's called Picture Day. It starts with a piece of Vanderbilt news that looks small and turns out to be a perfect...

Episode Description There is a quiet thing a lot of colleges track, and almost no parent has heard the plain-English version of it. It is called demonstrated interest, and at the right schools it can tip a close admissions decision. The catch: it has to be your KID showing the interest, not you. In this episode I break down what demonstrated interest actually is, why colleges care (hint: it is all...

The Common App opened August 1, and right behind the main essay comes the part that quietly makes or breaks a senior fall: the supplemental essays. The why us, the why this major, the community essay, the quirky one. There can be a lot of them, and most parents have no idea how to help without taking over. This episode is your map. I break down the four kinds of supplements, the one piece of news...

Your kid's course schedule is one of the very first things a college looks at, and it is the single biggest piece of the application you actually get to shape on purpose. Not the test score. Not the essay. The classes. And it is not just a senior thing. Every year of high school, that schedule is telling a story. In this episode I walk you through what that story should sound like, grade by g...

Six moms hit reply on my last email asking the exact same question: which test should my kid even take, the SAT or the ACT? It is the right question, and almost nobody asks it early enough. In this episode I give you the honest truth about both tests in 2026, starting with the fact that almost everything you remember about them is wrong now. Both tests got shorter. The SAT is digital and adaptive...

Picture two versions of you. July you, iced coffee on the porch, essay not written but honestly not worried about it. September you, up at eleven at night while a blank personal statement blinks back and the supplements pile up out of nowhere. The only thing standing between those two women is one rough, messy, kind of bad first draft, written in the next two weeks. The Common App opens August 1,...

Here is a little secret from my school counselor years: the new school year does not really start in August. It starts now. The first couple weeks of July are when the system quietly rolls every kid up to their next grade, no ceremony, no announcement. So congratulations, mama. As of this week, you are officially the parent of a brand-new freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior. And if there is a l...

Picture it: dinner table, and your well-meaning person lobs another "what about writing about your Eagle Scout project?" across the table while your kid slides so far down in their chair they're basically eating horizontal. Friend, I have lived this exact scene, in my own kitchen, with my husband Jeff and our son Jake. If "how's the essay going" has become a fighting...

Okay, real talk. It's 10 PM, you swore you'd put your phone down, and instead you're deep in a college admissions thread reading about somebody's kid who's apparently curing diseases between AP exams. And there it is. That pit in your stomach. The one whispering that your kid isn't doing enough and you're already behind. Friend, that feeling is lying to you. And...

If your teenager has been through something hard, a loss, a stretch of anxiety or depression, a family rupture, a health scare, a year that left a mark on the whole house, you have probably had a quiet thought you would never say out loud. That would make a powerful college essay. And then, right behind it, a wave of guilt for even thinking it. This is the warm, honest conversation about that exac...

I came home from the IECA conference in Baltimore this month with one observation I cannot stop thinking about: almost nobody in our industry is naming the MENTAL LOAD moms are carrying through their kid's college process — and nobody is building the toolkit to take any of it off her. In this episode, I take you back to my kitchen during Jake's senior year (the eighteen months of carryin...

Fresh off the IECA conference and a campus tour day at Dickinson and Gettysburg, Lindsay walks through the four myths that keep most moms from putting liberal arts colleges on the list. The "my kid wants STEM" myth, the cost myth, the "no grad school = no opportunities" myth, and the "small school = limited social life" myth. Plus what to look for on a visit, ten ques...

By the time senior year starts in August, what do you actually want for your kid? Lindsay says: a confident kid and a relieved parent. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens because of three quiet things you do between now and August that almost no one in the admissions industry is talking about. In this episode: lock the June testing plan, do the activities brain dump, and have the mone...

A mom-to-mom honest talk about the quiet grief that hits at every grade of high school, not just senior year. Lindsay walks through the unique grief of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, plus what actually helps when the milestones (or the lack of them) sneak up on you. Permission slip included. Key Talking Points The mom letter that started this episode 9th grade grief: the loss of access and being...

This week I am talking about the thing most parents do not realize about AP exam season. Your job is almost never the thing that feels productive. If you have a junior at home and they are absolutely cooked right now, you are not alone. May of junior year is the deepest valley of the academic year, and the most loving thing you can do this week often runs counter to every parenting instinct in you...

This week I am taking you behind the curtain. The curtain of what the personal statement brainstorm actually looks like from the inside. Including the part nobody talks about. The messy middle. The going-nowhere conversations. The short answers. The student who is convinced they are boring. The twenty minutes that feel completely unproductive right before the detail surfaces that changes everythin...

Every year I watch the same thing happen. Families spend months focused on the personal statement. They feel ready. And then August 1 arrives, the Common App opens, and the supplemental essays appear. Multiple prompts per school. Multiplied across ten, twelve, fifteen schools. Suddenly the writing workload is enormous and senior year has not even officially started yet. It does not have to go that...

Last week I got an email from a senior mom that stopped me in my tracks. I had sent a check-in note to senior families. She wrote back and said something I have not stopped thinking about: this process is just not what I envisioned it to be. I felt that in my whole body. Because I think it is true for almost every family in some version. And I think it is one of the least talked about parts of thi...

Every spring I hear the same thing from junior parents: my kid has nothing to write about. And almost every time, I find out that is not true. The story is already there. They just have not found it yet — because they are looking in the wrong places. This week I am coming off six college campus visits with Josh over spring break — Northwestern, Marquette, University of Wisconsin, University of Ill...