I did a seminar about college essays at an admissions event today. And I gave parents the advice I've given for my entire career as a college counselor about how parents can best help their kids with college essays.
Don't get involved. Stay away. In fact, run the other direction.
Parents are the worst judges of their own kids' college essays. You are not impartial observers. You love your kids too much, and you are way too close to the subject matter to advise your son or daughter what and how to write in their college essays.
Most kids resent their parents' involvement in the college essay anyway. And the colleges can always tell when you got too involved. Kids think and write differently than parents do, and you'd be surprised how obvious is it to the trained reader when too many of the ideas or the words came from Mom or Dad.
I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking I'm wrong. Every time I give this advice to a crowd, there's one parent who scowls at me. It's inevitably a parent who inserts herself into everything her kid is doing. It's the parent who's sure that she's the exception to the rule.
She's not. And neither are you.
So preserve your family relationship and the purity of the essays.
Stay out of them. Help with other things like planning college visits,
and filling out financial aid forms and cheering your kids on
throughout the process. But when it comes to college essays, remove
yourself from the process. Your kids and the colleges will thank you for it.