The to-do list for high school seniors seems to be growing longer each day.

When they’re not doing homework, participating in their extracurricular activities, hanging with friends, sleeping, eating or texting, here’s what they’re thinking about: their college list, testing, upcoming campus visits, college applications, the Common Application essay, supplemental essays, transcripts, an activity list, letters of recommendation and scholarships.

Let’s try to de-stress the situation by creating a fall timeline and breaking each of these bigger tasks into more manageable pieces.

- Finalize the college list by making sure it’s a balanced list with reach/target/safety schools.

- Include an in-state safety school for financial reasons.

- Review the standardized testing calendar and register for the SAT in October, November or December, or the ACT in October or December.

- Find out if any of the colleges on your list have separate “scholarship deadlines” – they’re earlier than the traditional deadlines.

- Prepare a timeline of activity based on each college’s deadline.

- Write a first draft of essays. Edit them and, yes, edit again.

- Review and then order high school transcripts.

- Research which colleges accept letters of recommendation.

After reading this, I hope all of you parents are now a little more sympathetic to the angst of being a high school senior.