When I submitted my college applications in the fall of 2009, I thought the hard part was over. But a few weeks later, I found myself hunched over my computer trying to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the standard form to determine how much funding a student is eligible to receive. The document does not look that difficult; the lines of the online application clearly link to corresponding lines of the federal tax form. But I was 17, and instead of my mother helping me to fill it out, I had to try and explain the form to her.

My mom, Nancy, was born in Laos and moved to Taiwan when she was 14. In Taiwan, she met my father and studied fashion design and sewing at a vocational school. She immigrated to the United States when she was 27 with her family; my father stayed behind for a job. Since then, they have maintained a long-distance relationship. My brother and I were born in California, and we see our father a few times a year.

My mother juggled caring for my brother and me with a series of part-time jobs: caretaking for the elderly, administrative duties at a Chinese school. We never talked about it, but I always knew she assumed I would go to college—and handle all the work of getting there.

But when it was time for me to apply for financial aid, we both became frustrated. I was sitting in front of my computer at my desk in my bedroom, and I made my mother come over to help me fill out the form. She asked me to explain each item that requested her financial information, and I had a hard time finding the words in my Chinglish to explain it to her. I was applying early in the year, and she hadn’t filed her taxes yet. The form asked for the previous year’s income based on her tax return. When she could not provide me with what I needed, I became annoyed.

“Why didn’t you do this earlier if you knew I had to fill this out?” I demanded. “What am I supposed to put for this?” I was angry at her, but mostly I was really scared that if I made a mistake I would never get the money I needed to go to college.

I thought I’d have to take out $30,000 a year in loans, and filling out the forms made me feel even more nervous. I read on the Internet about people saddled with debt. I felt like the application process was a do-or-die situation. Those concerns only grew during the summer before college, when UC San Diego called and told me they could not find a form I had sent—one that would complete my financial aid application. Only later did I learn forms could be corrected. With some perseverance I would get the aid I needed.

A study by the Project on Student Debt found that low-income and immigrant parents often overestimate the costs of attending college because they have so little information or experience. Many of these parents didn’t go to college themselves or did so abroad in a very different system.

Low-income and immigrant parents and their children often need extra help in applying for financial aid.

In the San Gabriel Valley, where I’m from, the Alhambra school district employs parent coordinators from different backgrounds who serve as liaisons between parents and the schools. They provide translation services in Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese, help new students with enrollment, and conduct home visits with students. Once every year, they co-host the “Cash for College” event with Alhambra High School’s guidance office. The L.A. Chamber of Commerce-sponsored program runs workshops to “provide free one-on-one professional financial aid assistance to families completing the FAFSA.”

My mom attended the “Cash for College” workshop during my senior year. The workshop helped her to understand that any student (regardless of income) could find a way to attend college. She told me the workshop had interpreters in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Spanish, as was typical of large Alhambra Unified School District meetings, but it was difficult for her to keep up or understand. She was told there would be another time to fill out the forms, but she also understood the students who would help her did not speak Mandarin, the language that she speaks. She figured I could do a better job.

When I spoke recently to the “Cash for College” parent coordinators, they told me that they serve as translators at the workshops, and help parents fill out the forms in the career counselor’s office. If my mother had that opportunity, it would have made my transition much easier.

If I could redo the process, I would be more prepared to demand help from my high school teachers and guidance counselor. I also wish someone had told me that these financial aid forms can be corrected, and each one did not have to be perfect or my chances would be ruined.

I just graduated from Loyola Marymount University, where I transferred after a quarter at UC San Diego, I am more cognizant than ever that financial aid—scholarships, federal and private grants, and loans—made my education possible. Without that assistance, I would not have been able to afford school. I received a scholarship and various grants from Loyola, as well as Pell grants. I graduated with about $5,000 in debt.

I’ve realized that my friends and cousins had their parents fill out the financial aid forms in their college applications. I thought it was strange at first—but then it occurred to me that the parents actually understood the forms and know more about their finances than their kids.

Many high school students and their parents in California need guidance on the college application process. School districts across the state should invest in programs to provide extra support over the course of a student’s senior year. The promised additional funding from California’s new Local Control Funding Formula could be used to create and maintain a “seasonal” program that starts at the outset of senior year, and ends after the FAFSA deadline. Guidance counselors or parent coordinators could step in to mentor a student or family once a month until FAFSA is due.

This kind of support would have really helped me when I was applying to college. My mother still occasionally says, in Chinese, “It was not that I did not want to be involved in your college applications; I just did not expect that you wouldn’t know how to fill out the forms.”