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

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...

Spring break feels like a pause. But for junior families, it might be one of the most important weeks of the year — and most families do not realize it until they are standing on a campus somewhere thinking... wait. This just got real. This week I am sharing what is actually happening in my house right now. Josh and I have been on the road doing college visits over spring break. ACT scores landed....

After years inside the school counseling system, I have something to say that I have been sitting with for a while. At the end of this school year I am leaving school counseling. For good. Not because I stopped caring about students. Not because anything catastrophically wrong happened. Because something has shifted — in me, in the work I am building, in what I know I am meant to be doing — and st...

It's ten o'clock at night. Your kid is asleep. You've got seventeen tabs open, a notes app full of school names and question marks, and somehow you feel more confused than when you started. Sound familiar? The problem isn't that you're not smart enough or not trying hard enough. The problem is that you're trying to solve a navigation problem with information. And thos...

We almost didn't apply to the University of Alabama. It wasn't a serious contender. It was a strategy — rolling admissions, a near-guaranteed yes based on Jake's test scores, and a confidence boost before the real applications started. What we got back was a full ride, an honors college fellowship, a study abroad stipend, a research stipend, and a dean who sat with us for over an ho...

What do you do when your teen says they want a college that “just feels right”? If you're a parent starting the college search process, you’ve probably heard answers like: “I just want it to feel like home.” “I want somewhere with energy.” “I don’t want it to be too hard.” But what do those answers actually mean — and how do you turn them into a real, strategic college list? In this episode,...

Most families build their college list using U.S. News rankings and schools they've heard of—but that's not a real search strategy. There are hundreds of incredible colleges your teen will never discover if you don't know where to look. In this episode, I'm sharing the best free college search tools, how to use search filters strategically, and how to narrow your list from 50 s...

If you've ever felt like colleges are keeping secrets about admissions—you're not wrong. But there's one document that levels the playing field, and most parents have no idea it exists. It's called the Common Data Set, and it's the closest thing to a college admissions cheat sheet you'll ever find. In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly what the Common Data S...

If you’re a parent staring at your high schooler’s transcript and wondering, “Are we doing this right?” —this episode is for you. Between course selection pressure and conflicting advice online, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the college admissions process. In this episode, I’m cutting through the noise and explaining what colleges actually look for when reviewing applications—especially for str...

Choosing the right college can feel overwhelming — especially when families are told to trust their gut or wait for a “feeling” on a campus tour. But what if that feeling leads you to a school that isn’t affordable, supportive, or aligned with your student’s needs? In this episode, I’m breaking down how to actually know if a college is a good fit using my proven Three-Fit Framework . This is the e...

Choosing a college can feel overwhelming for parents and students — especially when deciding between a prestigious college and a school that’s actually the right fit . In this episode, a college admissions expert breaks down the difference between college prestige vs. college fit , why rankings can be misleading, and how families can choose the best college for their student beyond name recognitio...

What’s the point of a $2,000 scholarship on a $75,000 school? 🙃 In this episode, college counselor and mom Lindsay breaks down how merit aid actually works , which schools give real money, and how families can avoid major sticker shock when college decisions arrive. If you’ve ever assumed college affordability comes down to FAFSA forms and crossed fingers, this episode will change how you think a...

If you’re a parent of a high school junior, it probably feels like everyone has an opinion on what you should be doing right now — college visits, testing, extracurriculars, essays… all at once. And the unspoken message underneath it all? If you’re not doing everything, you’re behind. In this episode, I’m busting some of the biggest myths junior parents believe — the ones that create unnecessary s...