Something happens over spring break that nobody really warns junior families about.
You plan the trip, or the visits, or the staycation, and you think — okay. We can breathe for a second. And then April hits and you look at the calendar and realize you are two months from the end of junior year. And suddenly everything feels like it is moving a lot faster than you thought.
This week on the podcast I am talking about exactly that moment — and sharing what is actually happening in my house right now as Josh and I navigate spring break together. ACT scores landed. We are in the middle of the test score conversation. And essay topics have started surfacing naturally in car ride conversations between campuses in a way that I think will resonate with a lot of junior families right now.
If you have a junior, here are the three things I want you to walk away with after listening:
The test score decision has a framework. You do not have to guess. Pull up the Common Data Set for each school on your list — Google the school name plus Common Data Set — and find the middle 50% range for admitted students. Where your student lands in that range tells you almost everything you need to know about whether a retake is worth it.
Essay brainstorming is not essay writing. Those are two completely different things and right now you only need to do one of them. Brainstorming starts with noticing — what stories keep coming up, what moments your student actually talks about, what lights them up when they are not trying to impress anyone. No blank document required.
You are not behind. Junior families in April do not need a finished essay topic, a finalized college list, or a declared major. They need a sense of where test scores land, a list that is starting to take shape, and a student who is at least in the vicinity of thinking about essays. That is the whole April checklist.
Here with you every step,
