For parents and guardians

Add or connect a child, see what their counselor shared, and track applications.

A parent account is organised around your children. If a counselor already has one of them on a roster, you are connecting to a record that exists; if not, you can keep your own.

Getting an account

Either a counselor invites you, or you register yourself at Create account → Parents & guardians. You will need to confirm your email address before anything works — confirmation is what turns the signup into a real account.

There is a third route if your child already has a SummerTrack login and you do not: Create account → Families asks you to sign in once as them to prove you hold their credentials, then creates your own account and links you. Your child and their counselor are emailed whenever that happens, and a counselor can switch the route off for a student.

Your first screen

A parent account with no children has nothing to show, so it opens on Add a child with two options:

Create a record

For a child no counselor manages. You own the record outright — nobody at a school or institute can see it, by construction rather than by a setting.

Link an existing account

For a child who already signs in to SummerTrack. Same credential check as above. Use this rather than creating a second record, which would split their work in two.

Both live in the same dialog on Children afterwards, so you never have to decide which one applies before you open it.

What you can see

Your children’s names, grades and profile details are always yours. The shortlist and the application tracker a counselor keeps are not: each is a switch the counselor turns on, with a second switch deciding whether you can edit as well as read. Until then their page shows a “Not shared yet” card — that is the counselor’s decision showing through, not a fault. Ask them.

Counselor notes come with the shortlist share, and your own notes are labelled Family note so everyone can tell them apart. For a child no counselor manages, none of this applies — you are the owner and everything is open to you. Sharing and access has the full picture.

Working through it

Home mirrors what a counselor sees, across all your children: deadlines in the next 30 days banded by urgency, recent activity, and how thin each shortlist is. Children is the roster, with the next deadline per child.

On a child’s page, the Applications tab beside the shortlist is the checklist of what each program actually requires. Tick things off as you go; everyone who can see the tracker sees the same state.

Programs is the full catalog, searchable and filterable. Where you have edit access, Add to… puts a program straight onto a child’s shortlist. Collections are your own private lists.

Managing who else is attached

For a child no counselor manages, you can invite a second guardian, give the child their own login, and ask a counselor to take the record on by naming their email address — they accept or decline from their own queue. Once a counselor does manage the record, those decisions become theirs.

Unlink removes you from a child without touching their record. Delete removes the record itself and only works on one you created that nobody else is on. See Your data for what happens to your children if you delete your whole account.