From the Westminster College Parent Blog · [Author: Lana Whitehead, Vice President for Enrollment Management] Reading time: about 4 minutes 

Here's a secret from the people who read applications for a living: we can usually tell how involved a parent was. Sometimes because the application arrives polished and organized and in unmistakably seventeen year old ways — the best ways.  And sometimes because it arrives in a 45-year-old's vocabulary, wearing a teenager's name. 

So when parents ask us — and they ask us constantly — "how involved should I be?", we take the question seriously. The honest answer isn't "back off" and it isn't "stay on top of everything." It's this: be the project manager, not the author. 

Here's what that looks like in practice. 

Own the calendar. All of it. 

If you take one thing from this post, take this: the single most valuable thing a parent can do is keep the dates. Your student is juggling classes, activities, maybe a job, maybe a sport — and deadlines are exactly the kind of thing that slips when life is full. 

So put these on the family calendar today: 

• October 1 — the FAFSA opens (more on this below) 
• November 1 — Westminster's Early Decision deadline, and the date to apply by — under any admission plan — to earn the $2,000 Early Application Grant 
• December 15 — Early Action deadline 
• May 1 — National College Decision Day and deposit deadline 

Being the calendar-keeper isn't hovering. It's logistics — and it frees your student to put their energy into the parts only they can do. 

Do the FAFSA together 

The FAFSA — the free federal form that unlocks grants and financial aid — is the one part of this process that genuinely belongs to both of you, because it's built on your financial information. Your student can't file it alone, and they shouldn't have to try. 

Sit down together in October. It takes less time than you fear, and it starts the money conversation your family needs to have anyway. Pro tip: Completing the FAFSA and submitting it to Westminster College (college code 003392) by April 1 earns your student Westminster's $1,000 FAFSA Filing Grant. And if the form throws you a curve, call our financial aid office — walking families through the FAFSA is a normal Tuesday for them. 

Don't touch the essay 

If your student writes an essay (at Westminster it's optional — welcome, but not required), the temptation to "just clean it up a little" is real. Resist it. 

Here's why: admissions readers spend all day with seventeen-year-old voices. A teenager's essay with a rough edge and a true story beats an adult-polished essay every time — because the polished one doesn't sound like anyone we'd meet on campus. Being a sounding board is great ("read it to me out loud, what's the story you're trying to tell?"). Rewriting sentences is not. 

The same rule applies more broadly: never email a college pretending to be your student. We notice. And more importantly, every time you handle something your student could have handled, they miss a rep at a skill college will demand daily. 

Let them press "submit" 

It sounds symbolic, and it is: the application should go in by their hand, not yours. Ownership of the click is ownership of the outcome — and students who own the process arrive on campus already practiced at running their own lives. 

A word for parents who didn't go through this themselves 

If you never applied to college, you might be reading all this and wondering whether you're qualified to be the project manager at all. You are — and you're in good company: about a third of Westminster students are the first in their families to attend college. 

Here's what we want you to know. You don't need to understand every term or have inside knowledge of how admissions works. That's our job, and we're a phone call away. What your student needs from you, no admissions office can provide: someone who keeps the calendar, asks how it's going, drives to the visits, and believes they belong on a college campus. That's the whole job description. Everything else — the FAFSA quirks, the deadline details, what "rolling admission" means — you can ask us, and no question is too basic. We mean that. 

The quick reference version 

Yours: the calendar, the FAFSA, the encouragement, the money conversation. 

Theirs: the application, the essay (if they write one), the emails to colleges, the "submit" button, the decision. 

Ours: everything confusing. Your family's admissions counselor is assigned by where you live and answers parents' questions all day long — find your counselor or call the Office of Admissions at (724) 946-7100. One phone call (or quick email) usually saves a week of wondering. 

And one last reassurance, parent to parent, from an office full of people who've sat on your side of the kitchen table: don't judge your parenting by an admission decision. Your student is more than any application — and the right college will see it. 

Lana Whitehead is Westminster College's Vice President for Enrollment Management, leading the Offices of Admissions and Financial Aid. She's spent her career helping students get into college, get through college, get launched, and keep learning — and as a mom of six adult children, she's done the same at her own kitchen table, six times over. 

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