With school work, sports, and other extracurriculars—not to mention looming college application deadlines, it’s easy to see how high school students are feeling stressed.
In fact, roughly 30 percent of newly minted college freshmen say they frequently felt overwhelmed by their workload during their senior year of high school, according to an annual survey of more than 190,000 first-time, full-time college students by the University of California—Los Angeles.
Helping teens manage the myriad responsibilities on their plates is an important task for parents to tackle while their student is still in high school, experts say. “Students who felt overwhelmed in high school might be on the path to continue feeling overwhelmed in college,” the report’s authors note.
Parents can help teens avert a lot of senior-year stress by encouraging rising seniors to get college applications out of the way as early as possible. Preparing admissions essays and applications over the summer, before they turn their attention to homework and grades, is an easy way to mitigate stress. The Common Application, which is used by hundreds of universities, is released on August 1, so students can easily use the month of August to get at least a full draft of the document completed.