The college timeline

If you are here because this has started to feel real and you are not sure what you are supposed to be doing about it, you have come to the right page. You are also, almost certainly, on time.

This is a journey you take together, and that is the best thing about it. Much of it is theirs: the applications, the essays, the visits, the slow work of deciding who they want to be next. Colleges will insist on that, and there are portals you will simply never have a login for. Other parts are yours - the money, the signatures, the dates. Knowing early which is which is what lets the two of you work alongside each other instead of tripping over each other, and the two checklists at the foot of this page split it out that way.

Start with the stage you are standing in.

Stage 1: 9th and 10th grade

Very little is happening yet. Some things to keep in mind, and then you can leave this alone for a while.

Grades count now, because they go onto the transcript a college will eventually read. Course choices count too, since they decide what is still open later. Beyond those two, nothing has begun. The SAT and ACT are still ahead of you, and a PSAT taken this early is practice that goes nowhere.

If this is where you are, the detail is on its own page: 9th and 10th grade: what to do now, including what to keep an eye on, what college actually costs, and three things worth doing whenever you get to it.

Stage 2: Junior year

This is the year that matters most to colleges, and the one where it stops feeling theoretical. There is a fair amount in it, but it is spread across twelve months and none of it lands all at once.

Stage 3: Senior year, fall

This is the busy one, and here is why. The applications and the money run at the same time, on separate deadlines, and the money side will not wait for the applications to be finished, which makes this the busiest stretch on the page.

Stage 4: Senior year, spring

The answers arrive now, and this is the part families picture when they imagine the whole process. The money follows a few weeks later, and it is the money that decides which of those answers you can actually say yes to.

Stage 5: after you choose

Once the deposit is in, the hard part is over. Almost everything left in the spring belongs to your student and runs through their college portal - the online account the school gives them, which you will not have a login for. Housing and its deposit, roommate matching, and asking the high school to send the final transcript are all theirs. Your part is the enrollment deposit itself, by May 1.

Stage 6: summer, the paperwork window

This is the quiet stretch that catches people out, because it looks like a holiday and is actually a to-do list with deadlines on it. None of it is hard. It just has to be done before they go, and it divides cleanly: the health forms, the legal paperwork and the tuition account are yours, while course registration, orientation modules and the meal plan are theirs. Dorm shopping is the one everybody enjoys, and it belongs to July and August.

Two items have a wrinkle worth knowing before you sit down with them. The FERPA, HIPAA and power-of-attorney forms are your student's to sign, not yours - they are releasing their own records, so this is a conversation rather than an errand. And the tuition portal will not show you a bill at all until your student adds you as an authorized payer, which only they can do.

Both lists are at the foot of this page, split by whose job each one is.

Stage 7: August, move-in

Move-in day is logistics and feelings in equal measure. Load the car the night before, know your assigned time slot, and give yourself the whole afternoon. The drive home is quieter than the drive up. Then the care packages begin.