The college application season is here and thousands of parents and students are working hard to get paperwork submitted before the deadlines. College Insight, with offices in Issaquah and Auburn, is helping hundreds of students during this time.

College Insight founder Elisa Howard said she is focused on helping students navigate through the college application process.

Howard shares her top three tips for turning this ‘chaos’ into a seamless process.

“Students and parents are often overwhelmed by the application process,” she said. “It’s relieving to work with an expert who understands and can fully support them through the process.”

Prepare for the SAT or ACT: The days are over when someone could walk in and take the test cold. Competition is fierce and the other students will have studied for this exam. Students can prepare by buying a prep book and studying at home, getting one on one tutoring or taking a prep course.

You don’t need to spend a ton of money, but putting the time and effort into studying for the SAT or ACT is worth the effort.

Visit Schools: There are some great schools in this country, but not all of them are good for everyone. Universities are not created equal, and transferring can have large monetary and time costs later down the road. In fact, a 2015 study shows that about 33 percent of undergraduate students transfer universities at least once.

That is a lot of money wasted as the next school likely won’t accept all of your credits and, with tuition raising at twice the rate of inflation, taking time off can cost more money in the long run.

You just can’t know if you will really like a school if you don’t see it for yourself.

Get Organized: Nowadays, colleges require so many different documents, and the documents are often coming from many different sources.

Elisia says, “I have met a few students who said they had to wait an entire application year because, even though they had submitted their essays and other application materials, they forgot to send in things like their test scores or transcripts to the colleges they were applying to and were denied admission as a result.”

College Insight is a college consulting firm based in the greater Seattle area serving clients across the US and in multiple countries around the world.

For more information, visit college-insight.org.