<p>Does anyone else find it odd the amount of parental involvement in college applications and decisions? I have come to notice on CC that there are two types of posters: Intelligent 17 & 18 year olds, and the parents of those intelligent children. </p>
<p>For instance, I visited UMich the other week. A parent was telling her daughter the places she wanted her to see(HYPSM) with a very demanding tone. The parent then talked on the phone with a Cornell rep. asking questions the daughter should have been asking!</p>
<p>Is this uncommon in this day and age? Shouldn't these teenagers have the accountability to pursue their own endeavors? ( I'm a spitting image of my parents lol)</p>
<p>I have even seen some parents post their child's statistics; looking for a way to boost admission chances. What are your views on this? I definitely feel like some parents do cross the line. When it comes down to it, who is attending the university? You, or your parents?</p>
<p>I just finished with my college app experience. My parents didn’t help at all (I even had to fill out all of the financial aid forms) but my mom /forced/ me to apply to Harvard because of her annoying dream.</p>
<p>I find many behaviors odd. But it’s probably unfair to paint “all parents” as being overly involved. Are some parents? That’s very likely. On the other hand, expecting 17 and 18-year-olds to be fully functional in the adult world is equally unreasonable IMHO.</p>
<p>When applying to colleges I handled the research, phone calls, financial aid, test prep, etc.
Those parents must allow their kids room to be independent imo.</p>
<p>As the child of parents who took little interest in my college search, including not visiting any schools, I have helped my children in their searches. None of my kids would have ever posted on this site. I stick mostly to the parents forum, which this is - for parents to share information. I could turn it around and find it odd that kids are posting in the parents forum, but often they are looking for advice from parents here, and many find helpful answers.</p>
<p>I think it’s only fair to acknowledge some facts. The college application process has become increasingly complex, and requires research (common data sets) for even moderate success in identifying match, safety and reaches…and then there’s the strategic planning and time management involved in applying, competing for scholarships, completing financial aid forms, etc…all against a backdrop of senior year coursework and SAT/ACT re-testing… and these are 17 year olds, often without adequate guidance from harried, overworked counselors. And it’s that much more complex and tricky for students with specialized interests, specific learning needs or uneven academic records. Should they do it on their own? Sure. Should they pay a wholly disproportionate price for being too organizationally immature, distracted or just plain stressed out? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>Personally, my goal has been to support my child in maximizing whatever opportunities were available to him at this important juncture in his life. He’ll take it from there.</p>
<p>Long ago and far away, I won national awards and a full ride academic scholarship to the college of my choice. I had very little guidance at school, and worse than no guidance at home. I was accepted to Stanford among others, but instead I attended the local state college where my boyfriend went, and we broke up by Christmas of freshman year.</p>
<p>I am unapologetic about my efforts, although I will admit to having overheard parents much farther along the helicopter spectrum.</p>
<p>Most of the parents who are involved are either full pay, or are searching for the best financial situation for their kiddo.</p>
<p>Some of you may be receiving a full aid package? Most kids will not be receiving this.</p>
<p>Even state educations are running into the 130K-150K range in some states. Privates can be over a quarter million dollars.</p>
<p>In spite of the constant “have the kid deal with it” comments, nobody seriously expects a teenager to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is one of the most ridiculous jokes or our times, this idea that college is “up to the kids.”</p>
<p>Right. But where do you think they are going to send the bills? Here’s a hint: not the dorm mailroom.</p>
<p>I have been happy to do research, make suggestions and guide my kids. I learned as much as I could about the process and researched schools in their areas of interests in order to help them come up with a list of schools to visit and/or look at further, as well as possible scholarship opportunities. </p>
<p>I look at it as their responsibility to have the relationships with teachers, high school counselors and college admissions folks. They have to do the work to get grades and study for SAT’s, etc. Then, they have to decide where they want to visit, where they want to apply and, finally, where they want to go. Once in college, I expect them to take responsibility for everything except paying the bills.</p>
<p>I’ll just warn that the parents on here are most definitely not a representative sample of parents. They tend to be very well educated and come from very upper “middle class” incomes. </p>
<p>Do I think it’s odd? Sure. But if they’re happy and the kids are happy, what should I care? I do feel bad for some of the kids of posters here though. So much pressure. Especially ones that are looking at the ivies when their kids are in middle school.</p>
<p>" None of my kids would have ever posted on this site. I stick mostly to the parents forum, which this is - for parents to share information. I could turn it around and find it odd that kids are posting in the parents forum, but often they are looking for advice from parents here"</p>
<p>My kids would have never posted on the parents or the students forum either. But my older son did post on the elections and politics site, so that’s where his interest in cc was.</p>
<p>I did way too much research on college and gave them far too much help with their applications, as they were both very busy and not that interested in learning the process. CC was an awesome source of information. And what was the sad result? They both got into high reach schools that they absolutely love. I can proudly say that they were both the far lower left dots on their schools Naviance graphs (for those who know what that means). Oh nooooo…they should have known it all and figured it out for themselves, they’ll be ruined for life!</p>
<p>Or maybe they’re just really, really happy with how things turned out.</p>
<p>You are all missing the point of the OP. She isn’t talking about normal parent involvement. She’s talking about those parents who do every step for their kids during the process… And she mentioned that, so I don’t know what some of you mean by, “Don’t categorize all parents as the too involved type blah blah…” And of course the parent should be involved in the financial aid process, but the entire college app process should be done by the student. It’s a time for them to learn responsibility, learn about themselves, and learn about the schools they’re applying to. If they’re not finding this out for themselves because mom “cares so much,” then what good is it really doing for them? Congrats on the mom who completed the process for her son and he got into an ivy. You said something along the lines of, “the sad part…” Yes, it is sad because whatever ivy it is he got into now believes that the hard work and interest that was put into your son’s application is all his… But really, it was mama bear’s. Yes, congrats. </p>
<p>See, I completed this whole app process myself, went through a learning process, succeeded, and STILL involved my mother by just talking with her about the schools I applied to, taking her on visits, and involving her in financial aid applications. When I reflect, I believe that that’s the way it should be done… That’s the way it’s meant to be. All in all, I agree with OP that some “helicopter parents” (as alexissss puts it) get too involved and it really does hurt the kid and create an even more screwed up college application process in the end. You’ll probably disagree and start posting counter arguments now. But, first, I want you to really take a look at the non-superficial fruits of your child’s labor had s/he led the process on his/her own, with you as a passenger, of course (I don’t disagree parent involvement is necessary… at a moderate level. Parents shouldn’t be captains or co-captains of that ship… Just passengers.) </p>
<p>Oh, and so what your parents weren’t involved in your app process when you were a teen? Since you wish that you were more knowledgable of the process when you were younger, why don’t you help your kid become more knowledgable instead of doing everything for him??? I don’t understand the logic… You make a mistake at a younger age so shouldn’t you teach from your mistake to help your kid develop better judgement on his own… You know, for the fact that HE’S 18. Let him grow up and stop doing everything for him.</p>
<p>Well, I really didn’t do anything for my kids except write the checks. But, I understand why parents get involved.</p>
<p>Some of the financial situations are very tricky and effect all sorts of elements of the app process. When we were kids we could put ourselves through college pretty easily. College has become ridiculously expensive in the meantime, and there are all sorts of things to figure out.</p>
<p>Also, there were far fewer elements to the app process. Many of us applied to only one or two schools, certain we’d be admitted because people didn’t go to college en masse the way they are in your generation, either.</p>
<p>So… Every year on all sorts of threads we see all sorts of kids freaking out because they can’t afford the college they did get into, or don’t know what to do about X, Y, or Z after the fact. Nothing to be done.</p>
<p>In the end, parents get involved because 1. college costs more than a house, these days. 2. finding the “right” college is complicated for many families.</p>
<p>when something becomes this expensive, it becomes a family decision and not an individual decision the way it was when we could just pay for it out of our part time job.</p>
<p>No… not when college can cost $60K/year. That is a LOT of money for most families. </p>
<p>I do get annoyed by the few students/parents obsessed by Ivy admit for status sake. But most just seem to be interested in finding the best fit and value (there can be so much variety of FA and merit$ offered).</p>
<p>I wish I had the help of the adult to guide me through the process, my father and mother have very little knowldege on how to strategically apply for college, one thing I am fortunate that they’ll help me on is the FAFSA and other scholarships, but the rest of the application process is up to me, myself, and I.</p>
<p>I disagree that the college search process is complicated. I think people MAKE it complicated. It’s far easier to search for a college on the internet then it was back when we had to rely on mailing alone :D. The information is readily available, however, people get WAY, WAY too caught up in the numbers and that really complicates things.</p>
<p>As for parents being too involved, sure, there are some over the top parents, we all know some in real life. I think most parents on CC SEEM over involved because we are here and that is what we talk about. I don’t think that in real life most parents here are as consumed with the process as it seems we are here…except for the month of April when the kids are trying to make their final choices and driving us all nuts with the waffling back and forth :D.</p>
<p>I’m in “discussions” with a friend that my main advice to her has been “BACK OFF”. Not only has she controlled the entire search process, but when her D has indicated various majors she has told her there is no way she would let her major in that field–um, ok. She can’t understand why her D has no interest in the process…that’s not ok. I think most parents here, however, have helped in the search process, mainly because we have more time to do that. I did a lot of research for our kids, they knew what size school they wanted and what kind of setting they wanted so I researched schools that met what they wanted. It was easy to cull out what they didn’t want and I would give them a list of schools I found that they may like. They would then further research those schools and pick ones they wanted to visit. Yes, they could have done that one their own, but with school, practices, homework, they were just busy. The final selection process was their own doing though. I would have picked other schools for them to attend but they had their reasons for picking the schools they did.</p>
<p>In our case, I was the guidance counselor since my older two were homeschooled for 9 - 12 and 7 - 12 respectively. Since my guys didn’t care to go to my Alma mater, it was important that I learn quite a bit about various colleges, the app process, and similar. There’s no way I would expect a 17 year old to know about all of it or to have to find out about all of it on top of doing their regular classwork and extra curriculars.</p>
<p>So, with my guys, we “shopped” for college possiblities together - then they looked at the names more online to come up with some they liked. I checked out financial data. We went on visits together. They did their part of the apps themselves and we (parents) did ours (as the guidance counselor). Once accepted we discussed options together, but they ordered their list. Both got in to their #1 choices with enough aid to make it work and both are there now - quite happy. I assisted them with figuring out their first semester classes and I buy books they don’t get from other classmates. They do everything else. It’s worked well.</p>
<p>For over-involvement? We saw it at oldest’s college where a mom was there with her D at Pre-Registration in the summer. That mom insisted on meeting with her D’s adviser with her D even though the adviser (correctly) tried to not have that happen. There definitely are some parents who go too far, but being on here? Most of us are simply trying to learn more to better guide (whether homeschooling or not). Compared to what I see from kids at school who don’t have much parent involvement, I definitely feel this way is better.</p>
<p>ps My guys did all “student” contact (apps, interviews, questions) with all schools. I did some visit and “guidance counselor” (you need what from me?) contact.</p>
<p>pps Even though youngest chose our public school, I’m still here in the guidance hat. He wants schools far from home. There’s far more info on here than in our guidance office and he has enough going on that searching for school names can be my department. As with my other two, he takes the school names and looks at them online himself. He’s started his own ordering or crossing off, etc. Assuming finances work out, like his brothers, where he goes to college will be his decision as is his major and any housing choices, etc.</p>