Blogging Your Way Through the College Admissions Process: You're Not Alone

Applying to college is a stressful time for everyone. Between scheduling visitations, getting teacher recommendations, and the “What if I get homesick?” fears, many parents and kids may experience mild panic attacks when the topic of higher education comes up—especially if they’re going through it for the first time.

Port Chester resident Anne Brady has been there. She's racked her brain to help her son pick out a unique topic for that elusive essay portion, hopped a plane across the country for a college tour, and provided maternal moral support along the way.

But since very few are seasoned veterans in this area, she realized her brainpower and past tribulations can benefit her friends and neighbors in a big way.

Her solution? Creating The Parents' Guide to the College Puzzle, a blog designed to share everything she has learned as a mother of the college-bound, from creating a short list of desired colleges to send applications to parents coping with the empty-nest syndrome after the kids are gone.

“You begin to feel a lot more comfortable knowing you aren’t the only one going through it—we found it so much easier to talk to other people,” Brady said.

Swapping advice with other parents is also a lot more effective than reading a terrifying New York Times article about the sky-high cost of tuition, said the former writer for the Ladies Home Journal and Sassy magazine.

Moms and dads aren’t the only ones freaking out, though. After all, moving away for four years is a pretty big decision for a 16 year old to make.

Port Chester High School senior Charlie Brady did his own share of stressing before dropping off his last applications to Ohio State and the University of Connecticut last semester.

“I always had a fear I wasn’t doing something so I broke [each location] down by major, requirements, and teacher recommendations,” he said.

Brady has since begun to educate his peers based on his own first-hand account, reminding them that ultimately, college is about you.

“One of the things I always tell my friends is depending on the size and distance of the colleges you are looking at, it’s up to you whether you want to be a plane ride away,” he said.

The purpose of The Parents' Guide to the College Puzzle is for others to borrow tips from each other as a community, so the former columnist for Sound Shore Review invites you to log on and spill your own stories.

“I worried and stressed more than I needed to, but I hope to take away a lot of that anxiety for you,” Brady tells her readers.