Starting Early Is Not About Pressure. It Is About Perspective.

One of the questions I hear most often from parents of ninth and tenth graders is some version of: "Is it too early to start thinking about this?" My answer is always the same. It is not too early to think about it. It is too early to panic about it.

There is a real difference between those two things, and it matters.

Starting the college planning process early is not about loading a fourteen-year-old with anxiety. It is about giving a family the time to make thoughtful decisions rather than rushed ones. It is about building a foundation before the pressure of senior year makes everything feel urgent. It is about helping a student discover who they are, not just what looks good on a resume.

In my experience, the families who wait until late junior year often find themselves overwhelmed. The timeline compresses, options narrow, and decisions that deserved careful thought get made in a hurry. Stress fills the space that perspective should occupy.

When students begin earlier, the process looks different. A sophomore has time to explore extracurricular interests genuinely rather than strategically. A junior can start researching schools with curiosity instead of desperation. By the time applications open, the student knows something about themselves and something about the schools they are considering. That knowledge is the difference between an authentic application and a manufactured one.

I want to be clear about what early planning does not mean. It does not mean hiring a college counselor in eighth grade and building every high school decision around admissions. It does not mean optimizing every summer for its application value. That approach produces anxious students with polished profiles and very little sense of who they actually are.

What it does mean is staying engaged, asking good questions, and taking the long view. The college process is ultimately a chapter in a much larger story. Starting early gives a student the time to figure out what that story is actually about.