School Information System

College Admissions: How Involved Should Parents Get?

Sue Shellenbarger:

After bending her work schedule to help her older daughter apply to college a few years ago, Suzanne Ducharme knew the admissions competition looming for her younger daughter would be tougher. So as her second daughter neared college, Ms. Ducharme, a New York human-resources manager, did what seemed the only sensible thing: She quit her job, she says, "to be here full time" with her daughter as she applied.

You've heard of parents quitting work to care for babies or wayward teens. Now they're quitting -- or considering doing so -- to help their kids get into college.

As the biggest high-school graduating class in history -- the class of 2009 -- begins the college-search process, parents are abuzz over how to help. One mother of a high schooler, a manager for a New York financial-information concern, says friends are pressuring her to devote full time to the college search. With other parents on the case 24/7, she says, "they argue that by working, I'm putting my daughter at a disadvantage in today's hypercompetitive college-admissions game."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 13, 2008 1:33 AM
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