Q: Our daughter is a rising senior, looking at colleges. She's an A student and top athlete who can probably get a soccer scholarship. We'd rather she focus on her studies and not have obligations to a team. She'd be the first in our family to graduate from college. Are there good, affordable four-year schools?

A: "The fact that your daughter is an A student while playing on her high school's soccer team is commendable," says Kevin McMullin, founder of Collegewise, which provides admissions counseling to prospective college students, and co-author of "If the U Fits: Expert Advice on Finding the Right College and Getting Accepted" (Random House/The Princeton Review, 2014). "These credentials will serve her well, not only with regard to her prospects for admission but also her chances for getting financial aid."

McMullin also says admissions officers will value the fact that your daughter may be the first in your family to attend and potentially graduate from college.

Don't be scared by the sticker price, McMullin tells parents and students: "Financial aid offices have power to offer more generous aid packages to students that the admissions office would most like to enroll. If a school really wants a student, it also can offer a merit-aid scholarship that has nothing to do with financial need."

Start by listing colleges where your daughter has a particularly strong chance of admission based on her test scores and application stats, suggests McMullin. Her guidance counselor should be able to help compile it. Look for prospects in "The Best Value Colleges, 2014 Edition" (Random House/The Princeton Review, 2014).

Next, identify schools where her aid chances are strong. The Princeton Review publishes Financial Aid Ratings (FAR) for more than 600 schools. "These numerical scores from 60 to 99 are based on more than 30 factors, covering data on cost of attendance, generosity with aid and academics," says McMullin. "Sometimes it costs less to attend a pricey college than a less expensive one due to the generous scholarships and grants many schools dole out that don't have to be paid back." For example, Princeton and Yale made the Review's 2014 Financial Aid Rating Honor Roll with perfect FAR scores (www.princetonreview.com).

A critically important part of the applications process is submitting applications for financial aid. The primary one is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA); FAFSA forms for your daughter's applications will be released in January 2015.

"This is a complex form with more than 100 questions. It is used by colleges to get a financial snapshot of the family resources to determine the family's 'EFC,' or estimated financial contribution," says McMullin. "That means what the colleges expect you to ante up."

Each calculates EFC differently, so your daughter's aid eligibility could be higher at one college and lower at another based on which aid form the colleges use.

McMullin encourages your daughter to apply to a financial safety school that you could afford if she receives no financial aid.

"Good prospects are public universities in your state," he says.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: My 7th-grade daughter got a zero on a report because her teacher says almost all of it was "stolen from the Internet." My daughter says everyone does it and doesn't see why it's cheating. Don't schools teach students research skills? She'll need to know that for college.

A: Never mind college; she needs to learn now about plagiarism. Teens are so used to sharing information online that many don't understand that they can't just grab a photo, poem or paragraph, and then weave it into an assignment and pass the work off as their own.

Yes, schools do teach proper research and writing practices. Educators from the elementary grades through high school incorporate research and attribution skills into media literacy lessons and specific classes such as social studies and language arts.

Many schools have crafted explicit policies to combat plagiarism. For example, the policy at White Station Middle School in Memphis, Tenn., provides "students with guidelines to enable academic judgment, develop integrity, and preserve honor." It spells out how to give proper credit to another's work and outlines consequences for failing to do so. (Go to www.scsk12.org/schools/whitestation.ms/site/index.shtml and click on the "WSMS Plagiarism Policy" link.)

Teaching students how to do research without plagiarizing is part of the Common Core State Standards. The Grade 8 English Language Arts Standards state that students will learn to "gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation."

Award-winning California middle-school teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron is aware of the challenge. "How do we as educators help students respect other people's work and not abuse it in this era of accessible information?" she writes in a blog post at edutopia.org. "The answer is, of course, to teach ethical academic behavior in a targeted way, to model it yourself and to hold students accountable."

She has created a terrific online scavenger hunt that teaches online ethics. The "hunt" leads students to a definition of ethics, a quiz to test "netiquette savvy," and Internet explorations through links to Creation Commons, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Library and the Library of Congress.

The final step in the hunt "is a contract of sorts," writes Wolpert-Gawron, where students type their names, stating that they "understand that every image and piece of music must be cited on every project from here on in throughout this school year."

Find Wolpert-Gawron's scavenger hunt on her blog post, "Common Core in Action: Teaching Online Ethics," at edutopia.org.

It's always been a parent's job to teach kids that appropriating the work of others is cheating. It's just a little harder in today's online world.

To make it easier, Wolpert-Gawron has written a fun teacher resource, "Internet Literacy, Grades 6-8" (Teacher Created Resources, 2010). It shows teens how to read through layers of links and use reliable research methods; it also covers "netiquette," online ethics, safety, privacy and laws. There are also tips for networking, collaborating and contributing online.

You might be surprised how much you both can learn from this little volume!

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: Two teens in our community committed suicide recently. One was our daughter's friend and she's still very distraught, even though she had counseling at school. I think she's depressed and needs more counseling. My husband doesn't. He skipped the funeral because he said it "celebrated cowardice." I want our daughter to see a psychologist, but he thinks that talking about it can rationalize suicide. What to do?

A: Get the referral. "Many teenagers need support to understand the grieving process and move on in a healthy way," says adolescent psychologist Stephen Wallace, director of the Center for Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa.

When a community loses a young person to suicide, parents should make an explicit effort to talk with their teens about what happened. Yet some worry that they'll plant the idea of suicide simply by raising it in conversation.

"This is false and inhibits vital dialogue and leaves young people at greater risk," says Wallace.

Counseling can help. But don't ask the counselor to do all the work. Continue to observe and talk with your daughter. While no studies show that suicide is contagious, "suicides among youth may be suggestive to those already contemplating self-harm. Most teens are not -- they're simply trying to grapple with something very hard to understand," says Wallace.

What do you say to your daughter? "Reinforce your love and genuine concern for her health, safety and welfare," suggests Wallace. "Reassure her that her feelings about the loss are normal. She also needs to hear that things will get better.

"Young people, short on life experience, often believe that the way they feel when distressed or depressed might be the way they will feel forever. It's critical to explain that all people, at some point in their lives, experience loss and emotional pain, and that there's a light at the end of the tunnel she can't see yet. Assure her that counseling can help."

A good counselor can determine whether your daughter is depressed and if she is, suggest appropriate treatments, advises Wallace.

Ninety percent of people who attempt suicide suffer from psychological ailments, and there are effective treatments for most of them, says Alan Berman, former president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

Teen suicides are a serious national problem. "It's the third leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds, and the sixth for 5- to 14-year-olds," says Wallace.

Wallace urges parents and teachers to look for signs such as declining school performance; social problems; substance abuse; neglect of appearance and responsibilities; appearing or talking about feeling sad, hopeless, bored or overwhelmed; outbursts, severe anger or irritability; talking about feeling anxious or worried; losing interest in activities; and hurting oneself, such as cutting or severe dieting. (For more information, go to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry website, aacap.org.)

Experts believe that most youth suicides are the result of temporary feelings of helplessness -- things we can identify and help with if we are observant and stay in close touch with our kids.

"Suicide isn't contagious, but it is preventable," says Wallace.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)