Having gone through the college application process twice in as many years, I feel compelled to warn parents: Things have changed dramatically since we applied to schools.

Back in the day, I applied to two private universities and had my test scores and transcript sent to the flagship public institution in my state. That was enough back then to be offered admission and a scholarship to the state school. My son, who has also applied to this same state university, had to complete a detailed common application, along with several supplemental essays. Prospective students now apply to an average of six colleges. It’s a lot more competitive and a ton more work than it used to be.

I’ve learned some things I wish I had known earlier in the game. For parents and students who still face this gantlet, here are my best tips to make this time a little less stressful than it tends to be:

1. Start early. Begin creating a list of colleges in the summer before your senior year. Around this time, start brainstorming a few essay ideas for your personal statement. The fall semester of senior year is a busy time for students. The earlier you start, the less stress you experience leading up to the deadlines.

2. Get ready to write. One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed is the amount of writing required for applications. Many selective schools require supplemental essays and short-answer responses, in addition to the personal statement. Applying for scholarships requires even more essays. Try doing a five-minute free write for each of the questions to deal with writer's block.

3. Love your safety school. It’s important to have at least one backup school you know you will be accepted to that you would be happy attending. While the most elite colleges have slashed their admission rates to low single digits, the majority of colleges still accept most students. Find at least one among this group and focus on the reasons you would enjoy going there.

4. Expect some parental involvement. Most public school counselors are responsible for so many students that they don’t have the time to offer much individualized help. Ask a parent or guardian to review or proofread essays and every section of the common application before it's submitted.

5. Ask teachers for recommendations early. Some are swamped with requests and have to set cutoff dates so they have enough time to write all the letters.

6. Learn the lingo. There are so many different types of admission: early decision, early action, early-action restricted, single-choice early action, regular decision and rolling admission. Unless you are absolutely committed to one school, use early action, regular or rolling admission.

7. Undecided is fine. It’s OK if you don't know exactly what you want to study, what career you want to pursue or even where you really want to go to college. Unless you are applying to a highly specialized program, writing an essay about one area of interest or checking the box for a major does not mean you are locked in. Many students figure out the answers to these questions along the way or explore a new career path after graduation.

8. Have a response ready. Expect people to start asking where you are going to college before you’ve even submitted a single application. It’s important for parents to respect their kids' privacy. Ask what information they are comfortable sharing and have a standard response.

9. Money matters. Be frank about what you can afford. Be realistic about loans and what it means to borrow large sums of money for an undergraduate degree, especially if you plan to major in a field with lower starting salaries.

10. Make a calendar. With so many deadlines, including those for financial aid forms like the FAFSA and CSS, create a calendar and share the deadlines with your parents. Break the application process down into smaller steps, such as filling out general information, creating a resume, starting an activities list, brainstorming the personal essay, asking for recommendations and compiling supplemental essays. There's a lot of demographics and information required by each college even when using the common app.

11. Normalize rejection. Rejection is to be expected with far more students applying to more colleges. Acceptance rates at highly selective schools are lower than they've ever been. Rejection should be a normal and expected part of the process. Colleges turn away many talented students, and some of the criteria are entirely out of your control.

When McKenzie Smart graduated from high school seven years ago, she knew she wanted to become a massage therapist.

She enrolled at Salon Professional Academy in Missouri's St. Charles County to earn her certification. Smart, 18 at the time, discovered it would cost around $17,000 for the nine-month course. So, like more than half of American students, she financed her education with student loans.

"I was told the banks would give me this much," she said. "I would have a fixed interest rate. That's all I understood about it."

Smart, 25, now works as a massage therapist -- a profession with an average annual salary of around $41,000 in Missouri -- and has consistently paid the $200 monthly installments for six and a half years. Even through the pandemic.

She was thrilled to discover that under President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan -- which would cancel up to $20,000 in student debt, helping millions of Americans -- she would be eligible to have $4,000 of her remaining $12,000 debt forgiven. She applied for the program in October, but hasn't heard back yet.

On Nov. 14, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the program, issuing a nationwide injunction against it. Six Republican-led states, including Missouri, challenged the plan, and a federal district judge in Texas also struck it down.

As the legal fight about the program's constitutionality plays out, there's a more fundamental question to be answered: Is student loan forgiveness fair?

Critics of the plan argue that this type of "handout" is unfair to those who have paid off their educational loans and to those who didn't take any to begin with. I can speak to this from personal experience.

I grew up in a working-class immigrant family, so I knew I would need loans to finance my education. I graduated in the late '90s with even more debt than Smart had. Then I took on still more debt for an expensive graduate school program.

In today's dollars, my total student loan debt would be more than $90,000. Since you are reading this column, you know I didn't enter a lucrative career.

Over many years, I paid off those loans -- but I also vowed to do everything I could to prevent my children from having to take on similar financial burdens for their education. I know what it's like to make sacrifices -- both to pay off my own debt and to save enough money to avoid that situation for my children.

Because of these experiences, I support easing the burden of student loans.

My generation, and those before it, paid significantly less for college than today's students do. In the 1970-71 academic year, the average in-state tuition and fees for one year at a public university was $394, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At that time, public universities received more of their funding from local and state taxpayers, which lawmakers supported because having an educated workforce was in the best interest of economic growth. As a result, it was entirely possible to work your way through college.

Now, public universities get much less of their budgets from state funding. By the 2020-21 academic year, the average in-state tuition and fees for one year had climbed to $10,560 -- an increase of 2,580%. It's unfair that previous generations had access to affordable higher education that current and future generations do not.

There are many examples of far greater taxpayer "handouts" -– banking and airline industry bailouts, corporate welfare, trillion-dollar tax cuts, subsidies for massive corporate farms -- that almost exclusively benefit our country's wealthiest people and companies. In fact, some PPP loans given to millionaires during the pandemic have already been forgiven.

Why do we only hear about "fairness" when low- or middle-class people might benefit?

My guess is that it's because most of us don't compare ourselves to the wealthy, whom we know benefit from the system, but rather to our neighbors. And some of us don't want a neighbor to get a benefit we didn't get. That can be attributed to human nature, but it's not really about fairness.

Fairness involves reforming the system so that getting an education doesn't mean mortgaging your future. Fairness means that graduates who commit to work in fields of public service -- such as teaching, where there are critical shortages -- should not carry the burden of student debt. Fairness means capping interest on educational loans.

Students who make payments for 15 or 20 years end up paying far more than what they borrowed. Forgiving some of that debt based on people's income is more than fair.

Passing on a burden to future generations simply because we struggled through it ourselves doesn't further the cause of fairness.

It simply continues a broken and vicious cycle.

For new and longtime voters, the stakes felt enormous in this midterm election.

I did an informal survey among my group of hardcore voters to ask about the No. 1 issue on their minds when they cast their midterm ballot. The most popular response had to do with saving democracy, protecting election integrity and combating domestic extremism.

Given that voting is the primary way we govern ourselves and make our voices heard, it’s understandable that protecting that system is foundational to preserving our American way of life.

The second most common response fell along gender lines. Half of the women I asked cited abortion rights, reproductive freedom and the post-Roe reality as their main issues. My sample tilts more left-of-center than the general population in my red state of Missouri. But other frequent responses may be top concerns among those right-of-center as well -- inflation, the economy and crime.

Both of the top answers I heard run counter to the truism that people vote with their pocketbooks. Max Gulker, writing for the libertarian think tank American Institute for Economic Research, describes how this cliche about voter behavior falls apart: White, working-class voters largely go against their economic interest by voting for politicians who support policies that favor the rich, while upper-middle-class progressives vote against lower tax rates, which are in their own economic interests. He argues that a better approximation for modern voter behavior is, “People vote for the candidate or party that provides a better story about themselves.”

I would argue that even this more nuanced analysis falls short in explaining this past election. Across parties, but among women in particular, there was an urgent sense that this election was about survival. With the Supreme Court’s recent decision that ended the protection offered by Roe v. Wade, women have experienced a dramatic loss of our rights. It’s hard to describe to a man what it feels like to wake up one day with less freedom and legal control over your own body. Suffice it to say it feels dangerously threatening.

This feeling is amplified for those of us who have experienced a heartbreaking or terrifying pregnancy outcome. As soon as the conservative justices on the Supreme Court released the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, I immediately thought about one of my most painful and personal losses that happened more than 20 years ago. My husband and I were ecstatic to learn I was pregnant after deciding we wanted to start a family. I remember feeling euphoric hearing the sounds of fetal cardiac activity at our first doctor’s appointment. However, our doctor expressed some concern that the heartbeat was slower than it should be and scheduled a follow-up two weeks later.

We prayed intensely during those two weeks that everything would be normal when we returned.

It was not.

The doctor could not detect any cardiac activity when I returned. Anywhere from 10% to 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. I never expected to be part of that statistic, but here we were.

It was devastating.

Our doctor recommended a procedure known as a dilation and curettage (D&C) to remove tissue from inside the uterus lining. I was in my 20s, anxious and bereft. I trusted whatever she told me. This is the same type of procedure that can be used to provide an early abortion.

The loss of a much-desired pregnancy feels like the loss of a dream. It hurts in emotional and physical ways. It’s hard to fathom that such a difficult experience is now that much scarier and harder to endure.

When Roe fell, I wondered what would have happened if I had lost that pregnancy today, especially if it had been a few weeks later or if the fetus had been nonviable, but cardiac activity was still detectable. Would I have been sent home to wait it out and risk sepsis, a life-threatening infection? Would my ability to have children been compromised by a delay in medical care? Would I have had to navigate a logistical nightmare while lost in my own grief?

All these questions come flooding back when I read stories like that of Mylissa Farmer, a Missouri woman who was described being denied a lifesaving abortion procedure at a Joplin hospital in August after her water broke early and her life was at risk. Farmer never anticipated her desired pregnancy could have become an issue in a Senate campaign.

We can’t anticipate or control how our bodies respond to a pregnancy. We can’t control whether a fetus survives or for how long. But Republican politicians can control what happens to us during and after -- even if it means losing our lives for a political agenda.

Knowing this, especially for those of us who have lived through our own reproductive struggles, this election felt intensely personal.

It felt like fighting for survival.