When Rhanita Smith, a senior at McCluer High School in Ferguson, Missouri, started to write her personal essay for a college application, she had no idea where to begin.

“I didn’t know how to sit and just talk about myself,” she said.

Smith, an "A" student, balances participating in Junior ROTC, volunteering as a praise dancer with her local church, working in retail and earning her cosmetology license -- all while still in high school.

Her life changed when she was 11 years old and her mother died. The help she received from her middle school counselor inspired her to want to become a child therapist.

On her college applications, she is focusing on her achievements.

“I don’t like using my sad story,” she said, adding that she'd rather highlight how far she has come.

This year, following the Supreme Court’s decision banning the use of race-based preferences in college admissions, no one reading Smith's application will know she is African American unless she finds a way to weave it into her personal narrative.

Veteran college counselors say they aren’t sure how the changes in this cycle will play out in admissions decisions, and that they will be looking closely at the demographic data when it is released. Despite the years when affirmative action was permitted, Black students are still underrepresented on the most selective college campuses.

Matt Essman, director of college counseling at Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School -- a private institution known locally as MICDS -- said a big part of the racial disparities in higher education are tied to the country's wealth and income disparities. Students whose families are in the top income brackets are significantly overrepresented at the most selective institutions, and the vast majority of families in those top income levels are white.

Schools trying to use income to increase diversity on their campuses face an additional hurdle, Essman said: “This year is going to be more challenging than ever because of the changes in the FAFSA and aid process.”

FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is the form required to determine eligibility for student financial aid. Normally, that form becomes available on Oct. 1, but this year, it will be sometime in December. Most colleges consider a student’s ability to pay when making admission decisions, but this year, that information won’t be available until two months later than normal.

Smith has already applied to a handful of colleges and plans to apply to several more. Her dream school is Bowie State University in Maryland, ranked as one of the top 20 HBCUs in the country. Wherever she eventually enrolls, the amount of financial aid she receives will be a critical factor.

“I’m not a rich kid,” she said. “I know I will also get a job on campus to help pay.”

Counselors and other experts are doing their best to help students navigate the admissions landscape in this post-affirmative action era.

Jason Lum, founder and owner of ScholarEdge College Consulting, has advised students for more than 23 years. Regarding the recent ruling, he said that in the context of essays and activities, the consideration of race is still entirely permissible.

“The Supreme Court did not say that race is completely irrelevant,” said Lum, who has a legal background. “On its own, race cannot be a factor in decision-making.”

Annalee Nissenholtz, St. Louis-based director of college counseling at Interface Education Services, said college interviews and application videos will be even more important this year.

It’s still critical to be honest and authentic in every part of the application, she says.

That advice hasn’t changed.

During my four years of college, my mom spoke to exactly one other parent whose child attended the same university.

She met the mother of my best friend. They got along well, but they lived in different cities, so that meeting was the end of their interactions. The extent of communication my parents received about my college life was a weekly long-distance phone call from me.

This is not to say that my parents were unconcerned or uninterested in my life at that time. Back then, parenting was more of a hands-off experience. That was especially true once you dropped off a kid at a college campus.

"Good luck and stay out of trouble" was the general guidance given to us.

Now, we can join private Facebook groups dedicated to the school our child attends. I started joining these groups when my kids were in middle school; they were a good place to keep up with school news or upcoming events I wouldn’t otherwise hear about. I also picked up the school gossip through this online grapevine.

Of course, there’s always some drama when a large group of people gather -- especially virtually. Even that could be entertaining to watch unfold.

I did wonder about the parents who volunteered to moderate these groups, though. Did they ever log off?

When our kids moved up to high school and became more involved in extracurricular activities, I joined the parents’ groups for those organizations. That was in addition to the parents’ pages for the high school itself -- both the official and unofficial versions.

Pretty soon, my Facebook feed was littered with posts from parents I didn’t know personally but whose kids shared something in common with ours, even if it was just attending the same school.

I didn’t expect that this firehose of information would keep flowing when the kids left for college, but it has. Surprisingly, the posts from parents have become more frequent, and more revealing, as their children have gotten older. Parents share about their college kids’ social adjustment issues, loneliness, roommate troubles, course scheduling problems and cafeteria complaints.

It’s hard to imagine my own parents knowing such details about my life when I was that age, let alone sharing them with hundreds of my classmates’ parents. I would have died a thousand deaths if they had revealed that kind of information about me.

But we are in a different era of parenting. We are conditioned to be more involved, solving more problems for our children -- even when it deprives them of learning how to deal with their own challenges and discomforts.

I remember getting a horrible toothache during my freshman year: I had to find a nearby dentist, figure out how to get there, get the tooth extracted and deal with the bill and the aftercare. When my daughter had a toothache at the beginning of her junior year, I asked for advice on the parents’ page and had a list of vetted recommendations in minutes.

A recent Wall Street Journal article described how parents are hiring concierge services to “mother” their college students, doing the sort of tasks a mom might have done at home. It seems like these parents are hiring a cross between an emotional support animal and a butler. The extremely wealthy one-percenters among us have always had access to these types of services, but now this level of handholding has trickled down to the masses.

This does both parents and their children a disservice. A huge part of being a young adult is learning how to function independently. While our parents had little choice but to leave us to our own devices, our generation seems to struggle to give our children the same freedom from parental oversight.

To be fair, many of us are now writing hefty tuition checks, adding a greater layer of financial investment to the situation. The stakes for students also feel much higher. But giving them space to find their way through some challenging situations gives them the confidence that they are capable.

It’s tempting to follow the travails of college life through social media posts from your fellow parents, who may be as anxious as you are about letting go.

However, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

There's something about a struggling single mom that provokes the perfect people.

The perfect people -- those who have always made the best choices and the right decisions -- perk up whenever I write about single mothers in difficult circumstances. Recently, I shared the stories of two such women: a mother of four working at Amazon, and a pregnant mom working at Arby's. Their jobs don’t pay enough to cover child care and basic necessities for their families. It shouldn't be controversial to say that a person working a full-time job in America ought to be able to provide food and shelter for their kids, or that young children obviously need someone to watch them while their parents work.

Hearing these mothers' stories made me feel disgusted that some politicians would rather give trillion-dollar tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest people than renew a child tax credit that had lifted millions of kids out of poverty.

I was raised to try to imagine other people’s situations and feel compassion for those in bad circumstances. I assume this is how most people are raised.

But reading about these women's hardships triggered a number of people in an entirely different way.

Phillip, for example, wrote this about the mother working 50 to 60 hours a week at Amazon, a company that makes billions in profits: "I have no sympathy for (her) whatsoever ... In most cases having a child is a choice, not an accident. If (she) had given a moment's thought to the consequences of having a child, she would have realized that she couldn't afford one child, much less four."

He was one of several who responded by attacking the life choices of financially strapped moms: How dare they have a child while poor? Why couldn't they just get a better job? Where was the father?

These people seem ignorant of how a person's life circumstances could be different from their own. A few factors to consider: Not everyone goes to schools that prepare them for college or higher-paying jobs. Partners or spouses sometimes leave their families and shirk their responsibilities. In America, 40% to 50% of marriages end in divorce. Some people get sick or marry the wrong person or experience a streak of bad luck.

What kind of bubble must one live in to never have met someone whose life has taken an unexpected or difficult turn while they have children to support?

Also, I'm surprised this has to be spelled out, but a woman cannot control 100% of the factors that can lead to pregnancy: Birth control can fail. Partners can lie or refuse to use contraception. Women can be coerced or pressured into sex.

Conceiving a child is not a one-person job, although the consequences of having a baby disproportionately affect women.

Interestingly, a number of the emails condemning these single working moms came from men. None of them suggested making contraception free and easily accessible. (Birth control can cost up to $2,000 a year, depending on what your doctor recommends.) None of them criticized the complete ban on abortion in Missouri and other states.

You would think that those who want women to avoid having children when it would create a financial strain on their households would also be advocating for reproductive freedom and universal access to birth control.

And regardless of how you feel about a woman's personal choices, why would anyone be against ensuring all babies and children have their basic needs met? Children can't go out and get a job to support themselves. It's pretty heartless to want to see babies born into poverty suffer.

I was taken aback by the lack of empathy -- the angry rants and the blame -- for working moms who can't make ends meet.

Of course, there are also those who respond to these stories by asking how they can help. Not all of us can do that every time we encounter someone in a bad situation.

But it doesn't cost anything to care.