You just sent up 15 red flags to the admission department. The questions are fine but should have come from your daughter. To the college, she is an adult and needs to operate as one. I understand where you are coming from but it should have come from her man. That’s just my humble 2 pennies.
He’s been doing it for quite awhile now and his signature had explained it for just as long. Not sure what the problem is.
Nice that you got your questions answered so quickly, now what was the consensus among the five regarding your concerns if you don’t mind sharing ?
I’m sorry but I think its perfectly fine for a parent to ask the questions. The kid, while smart, is still only 18. They dont know all this stuff yet.
The questions (Can she start in the spring semester instead of the fall semester? Can she start in the fall of 2021 instead of the fall of 2020?) were fine. What was completely unnecessary was the whole explanation of the pandemic (like they’ve never heard of it) and that you’re spending all this money on her education (which is, more or less, what every other parent is spending).
Since the OP is asking for advice, this is better suited to IMHO than QZ.
Colibri
Quarantine Zone Moderator
But it’s appropriate and expected to admissions staff, and as a dean, I field questions from prospective parents all the time. Not unusual. Once enrolled, yeah, parents reaching out to professors or deans is generally not a good idea.
And I’m answering this in avoidance of all the fall contingency planning I should be doing, so don’t ask me!
Well, was asking for advice. Now I think we’re just Monday-morning quarterbacking.
What nonsense.
Maybe it’s an upbringing/cultural thing? My kids are not yet old enough to be attending college, but I clearly recall that when my sisters and I were applying to colleges, my parents’ expectations were that working out all the details was our problem; my parents were just supplying the money. And they wouldn’t fork over the money until various logistics questions were answered to their satisfaction, the answers to which my siblings and I as the applicants were expected to obtain ourselves from the colleges under consideration.
Sure, they made suggestions like all parents about where to apply, what things to consider, etc…, but it was always our decision and our responsibility. My folks’ position was that the goal was to get a degree, and as long as they were satisfied that we were doing our due diligence and had a high likelihood of actually progressing towards earning that degree, they were fine cutting the checks. The only time I ever recall my parents overruling my judgement was a time when a college was holding some kind of application seminar in a hotel conference room near our town, a good school that I nevertheless had no particular interest in attending. My Dad made go to the seminar anyway just to hear the college’s sales pitch because it was convenient to do so, so “why not?”
Granted, the current situation is a lot for anyone to handle, but I too found it a little weird that the parent was taking point here, rather than having the daughter taking point with the parents acting as supporting cast/advisors.
Some posters might not want to be part of his “experiment”.
This board favors standard spelling and grammar.
No, I’m sorry.
Todays world of college is so much more complex and EXPENSIVE that kids alone should not be trusted to handle all the issues themselves.
Heck I went to college over 30 years ago. Its a new world now.
What I found equally as weird is that although nobody as far as I could tell was saying the parent(s) should be completely uninvolved, suggestions that the email should come from the student , even if it was written by the parent, were taken as if someone was suggesting that an 18 year old who doesn’t know how to swim should be thrown into the deep water without any help. Nobody said the OP couldn’t advise the daughter about what questions to ask , or even that he shouldn’t actually write a shorter email - just that it should come from the daughter. " Draft a letter for her signature" would be fine. I’m not quite sure what is so offensive about the idea of the email coming from the student and why it is so important to some that the email come from the parent.
I’m a number of decades out of college myself, but it hardly seems like a new world. The entrance requirements are still the entrance requirements, the essays are still the essays, the paperwork is still the same annoyingly hefty amount of paperwork, the SATs are still dumb. Besides, if you can’t trust the student to handle the admissions process, how do you expect to trust the student to handle 2-4 years of independent study and living, which is equally if not more complex an endeavor? There’s nothing that says the parents have to pony up if it’s clear the kid is not handling the admissions process adequately. Gap years to develop additional maturity are not bad things.
As I mentioned, it’s not like my parents were not involved. They certainly had their list of questions and concerns (“what do you plan to study”, “where do you plan to apply, and why those schools and not others?”, “do you qualify for financial aid?”, etc…). It’s just that they expected me as the applicant to do all the legwork to get the answers to both their questions and any I may have had; “what questions do you have about college that you need to ask college admissions?” was certainly one of their prompts. Once all the information was gathered and discussed, only then would they sign checks.
Basically it’s like reading a post full of spelling errors. How long has the “experiment” been running?
Well, that’s the problem. You’ve completely missed out on a cultural shift. Every kid goes to college now, and a gap year usually means you lose your way to get in. No one one is expected by 18 to be sa full adult handling everything, as they’ve not had to before. College is where you grow up, not s place you grow up before you get there.
Filling out stuff for college does consist of stuff for the student, but also for the parents. They say how much money they can contribute. Students rarely handle financials themselves.
The fact is that people who actually deal with college now say that this is all normal, while the people who think it’s weird all went to college a while ago shows that there is a difference.
As someone who went to college even 15 years ago, all the complaints about how it might make the student seem came off as pointlessness. Even if the college did think the parents were “helicoptery”, why would I care? Are they gonna drop the kid for it? Not a chance. It read to me like the typical Doper " gotta show how I’m superior to the OP of an advice thread."
Plus the idea of adults thinking an action between parents and children is cringy seems odd to me. Kids think that way. Adults just do what needs to be done, even if the kid might get embarrassed. Embarrassment is one of those things kids think matters but adults realise generally doesn’t.
So those arguing that the kid would feel cringe were admitting they werw not yet adults. Kids are the ones who want to do everything without help,to prove they are an adult. Adults know they are adults and don’t care.
I’m not saying that last part (about cringe) is you, BTW. Just covering the other argument I saw and my reaction.
I also don’t get howblying and pretending the kid wrote it would be better, which some Dopers have suggested. Why not have it come from the people who are paying? Indirect communication causes problems. Again, it seems be about some odd need to save face in front of clerks at a college, rather than be goal oriented.
Hope the first semester goes well. Our son is a junior at Ithaca, and they just decided this week to go all distance for the fall semester. He’ll be missing his friends, but online classes went fine last spring. It helps that he’s in a major that lends itself fairly well to working remotely.
Good luck to Sophia! Good thing she’s going to school in New York State - one of the few areas in the country that has made strong progress in containing COVID