Usacollegechat Podcast

Welcome back to our summer series, entitled The Search Begins. Again, this series is dedicated to those of you—primarily the parents of juniors—who are starting a focused college hunt now. However, today’s episode is going to be useful to all high school parents as kids gear up—or wind down—for the summer. A note to families with younger high schoolers: It might be time to get a jump on preparing for college applications. Long ago in Episodes 15 and 16, we talked about extracurricular activities, internships, volunteer service, and part-time jobs that students might undertake after school during the school year in order to give a boost to their college applications. Whether your child will be completing The Common Application (which is currently used by over 600 colleges), the Universal College Application (which is currently used by about 45 colleges), or an individual college’s own application (when a college does not use either one), we said then that there will likely be a section that asks your child to