Nile Nickel, founder of LinkedIn Focus and moderator of the Social Media Business Hour podcast, joins our podcast to discuss how students can develop their own profiles to set themselves apart from other college applicants, and eventually other candidates for careers once they graduate.

Later, I'll also be recommending six great tools parents can use to plug in to their college planning process, so let's get started.

We turn our attention to sports in Podcast 24 – and if you have a promising student athlete in the house, it pays to listen in. With thousands of college coaches across the country who hold nearly as many scholarships in their hands, athletes need to do what they can to get noticed, and potentially earn generous athletic scholarships to attend college.

David Frank, VP of Athnet Sports Recruiting, is here to discuss how that process has evolved and what you can do to raise the potential for your student. He's been in the business for about 15 years, and saw the evolution of communicating with coaches go from emails to online profiles. Athnet's website, AthleticScholarships.net, therefore provides the opportunity to load athlete profiles for better exposure to coaches across the nation.

• We weigh the benefits and the downsides to entering college through athletic scholarships and the process involved in evaluating the best fit for your family
• What to put into a profile
• How the athletic scholarship system works and when to contact coaches
• David's 3 Quick Tips for families considering pursuing athletic scholarships

Later, we answer an often-asked question about how to approach campus visits to gather the best information to make a solid decision on which college is right for your student.

College Ap-plications: It's More Than Just the Essay" and we discuss what not to overlook, and how to use the book to set yourself up for success.

Later, we will also discuss a question on student loan repayment – how soon do you need to start paying, what options are out there for loans as well as repayment and when you should even start to research it.

Wallet blog, and while he's been a financial planner, he was first a newlywed with $52,000 in debt (not including the mortgage) – a debt he erased in about 18 months. He felt the need to help families struggling with debt and tight finances rather than the wealthy clients he had been seeing, so he created the blog to answer questions, offer tips and plans to lead people out of debt.

We'll talk about:

• How to get your kids introduced to handling a credit card, even well before they start college
• How parents themselves can address and erase debt to position themselves for college funding
• Knowing how much parents should take on in college debt, and how to say no if that number falls short of the college's price tag.
• What tips and strategies families with tight budgets can use to control spending
• Preparing for unplanned expenses
• Deacon's 3 Quick Tips for starting college smart

I'll also outline a basic plan for when to start late-stage college planning in the "Brad Recommends" segment

As a Certified Financial PlannerTM professional, specializing in late stage college planning, today's guest is a great partner in helping me to provide families with guidance in organizing their finances as the kids head off to college. Troy Onink is the CEO of Stratagee and has developed software called SmartSearch for financial advisers. He also authors a column for Forbes Magazine called "College Crossroads," which offers information and advice for families in the search for college and the means to fund it.

As if filling out college applications wasn't stressful enough, students seem to have particular angst over what to say in their college essay. Add to that the fact that many college applications have multiple essays they require, and the process can be a real stumbling block, even for the brightest students.

Elizabeth Benedict and her company Don't Sweat the Essay, mentor students through the pro-cess and we're thrilled to talk to her in this show. Her titles also include novelist, college writing instructor along with business owner, and she shares her thoughts on how to set yourself up for success when it comes to putting it into word.

We're exploring the college application process in this show, with Lisa Bleich, author of "Surviv-ing the College Application Process." I found this book particularly useful in its case study ap-proach to helping students determine what type of "angular student" they are in the eyes of their target schools.

Bleich's background in marketing, teaching and mentoring combined, lead her to assisting stu-dents and their families in exploring their unique strengths that will help them appeal to colleges when they apply, and write their essays. She tells us that there were already books that explain the "what" of the application process, and her book, which uses 11 various case studies, helps explain the "how" and the "why" of the process. The narrative format also is designed to help students identify themselves and their situations to provoke questions of their own to hone in on their own unique talents and experiences.

Later, we also dive into the question on who should fill out the FAFSA or the CSS Profile, which are financial aid forms used to determine eligibility for aid and the types of aid families can ex-pect to receive.

We're taking the college planning process and backing it up about four years in today's podcast as we talk with young author and student at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. It's a boarding school – one of about 300 across the country – that Justin Muchnick sought out as a grade school student.

Today's show features a great way to visit many college campuses without ever leaving your home. Chris Car-son is the founder and President of CampusTours.com, which features hundreds of virtual tours you can take of campuses across the country. It's never going to be a replacement for the real thing, but it can help you hone down your choices based on what you see.

I'll also answer a question on what impact a student inheritance can have on financial aid and discuss what the options are to minimize any negative impacts there could be.

Welcome back – we're excited to bring you another great show, which includes an interview with Felicia Gopaul, founder and creator of the "Career 100" podcast, which features interviews with professionals in the top 100 careers.

The aim for Gopaul is to help undecided students entering college choose a major to help them save time and money. Her podcast format asks the same questions of professionals that most students might want to know and in hearing the insights from those who have "been there," students can tighten their focus and select a major before they start.