The conventional wisdom has it that so-called helicopter parents are annoying their children by hovering over their every move as they apply to college. But it turns out most freshmen are happy with how involved mom and dad were during their college search.
In fact, new survey data suggest that the bigger problem may be the opposite — parents sometimes aren’t as attentive as their children would like.
That’s especially true for Hispanic students, who were much more likely than Whites to say their parents weren’t involved enough in areas like helping them apply to college and helping them choose classes once they got there.
The figures, from a major survey of college freshman out from University of California-Los Angeles, are part of an emerging body of research on what has largely been an anecdotal trend: the idea that parents have become much more involved in the lives of their teenage children, perhaps unhealthily so.
Twenty percent of Black students, and 27 percent of Hispanic ones, reported their parents were not involved enough in their applications. Hispanic students, who are much more likely than Whites to be first-generation college students, also were substantially more likely than Whites to say their parents had too little involvement in areas such as dealing with college officials and choosing college courses.
Those numbers seem to confirm what many in college admissions have been saying for years: Boosting the comparatively low proportion of Hispanics who go on to college will require concerted efforts by recruiters, guidance counselors and financial aid officers to help them through the process.
“Our parents are unaware of the issues involved, so they couldn’t helicopter, hover, if they wanted to,” said Vicky Evans, college counselor at Downtown College Prep, a charter school in San Jose, Calif., that serves mostly Hispanic students.
