It’s usually not a good idea to have one of your parents call the department on your behalf.
And if you have the kind of parent who does this without your asking, you have my condolences.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I dn’t think there are parents who would do that in the 1st place, they might do that for college only. After graduation parents usually think that their son/daughter is now old enough and of course they are proud of him/her. So calling grad school on their behalf is highly unlikely.
Lisa
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Look up “helicopter parents” at, say, here. This is a very real phenomenon, although I’m amazed it’s leaked into graduate school admissions.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Lisa, I suspect (and this is just a shot in the dark) that Julianne didn’t post this as a random piece of advice. I’d suspect this just actually happened.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Lisa — I’m head of graduate admissions for my department at UW. Yes, it happens.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
What if your parent is Barack Obama or Bill Clinton? Would you mind then
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Hm, when I came over here from Europe I found it weird how much the parents are involved even in their children’s undergraduate education. Where I come from, when you leave for college, you leave home and basically start taking care of yourself. But on the other hand, where I come from the parents are not paying tuition.
There’s some kind of childhood creep going on. What’s next? Parents negotiating startup packages for assistant professors?
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
How does this sound remotely like a good idea? The parents obviously have a conflict of interest… What could they possibly say that would be effective?
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I am not kidding here: one of my colleagues told me that at a nearby university, a parent called the dean on the behalf of their kid……CONCERNING THEIR TENURE DECISION.
His wife is a professor in that university (same department?)
The helicopter parent situation is real and at small time, private universities, you see it more and more these days.
Another example: a student’s mother went with him TO HIS JOB INTERVIEW.
That happened with one of our graduates.
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Well, it’s better to admit a meritable student with a helicopter parent than admit a non-meritable legacy student. While I don’t condone a parent calling the admissions office on behalf of his or her child, is this any worse than calling the alumni foundation and implying that a donation might be doubled if things go a certain way wink wink? That’s just a more subtle, sophisticated form of helicoptoring parenting, in my opinion.
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I’m sure no self-respecting gay parent would ever do such a thing.
Ooops. Sorry. Wrong post.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Oh
my
God.
What do you actually say in those situations?
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Hermann Einstein did both for 22-year old Albert. He wrote to Wilhelm Ostwald and all but begged him to grant his son a position as a teaching assistant “so that he might recover his joy of living and working.” He did so without Albert’s knowledge.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
As Kevin’s post indicates, helicopter parenting predates helicopters. I seem to recall Feynman’s father also having a talk with the graduate admissions people.
The other thing about helicopter parenting: it works. Check out the careers of George Bush and John McCain.
Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I’ve started looking into future education options for my two year old son.
Julianne, when should I stop doing this?
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I recently started a tenure-track position at large university. My mother got upset that I didn’t want to introduce her to other faculty when she visited.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
One guy brought his mother to an admitted grad student visit weekend that I attended. She came to the parties and group sessions; I don’t know whether she went with him to the one-on-ones with professors.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Well, what if your parent is a good friend of people in the department?
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:55 pm
It sounds like the sort of thing the Doris Roberts character would do on Ray Romano’s sitcom. Sometimes sitcom life is too close to real life (only not as funny).
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
#14 you should never stop …….. depends on him - depends on you .
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Speaking as someone applying to grad school right now, I sincerely cannot imagine doing this or anyone who would.
But then, things change- my freshman year was the first year there was a “parents orientation” but me and my friends just never told our parents about it, now it seems like the majority of them come. And the most popular form at UG Studies is for allowing a 3rd party (ie parents) to see your grades; that didn’t exist at all just four years ago.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
[…] Tip to helicopter parents: from Cosmic Variance It’s usually not a good idea to have one of your parents call the department on your […]
October 24th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Ok, sad but believable.
So, do you ever get the inverse? A concerned parent calling the school to keep their child from throwing away his or her life to that silly thing called science? I mean, John’s fascination was cute at one point, but do we really want him getting a degree (or shudder an advanced degree) in science? He could be making real money with a real job afterall! This science thing is just a fad we’re hoping he grows out of.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Julianne,
Although I have no children yet, I’d like to go ahead and put in a good word for cell that will undergo meiosis to give any future offspring half of the genetic material that they MAY one day, many years from now, take to your university. Now I can’t really speak for the other half of said offspring, but the cell that he or she came from on my side was a real team player. I like to think I run a tight ship here and this little guy (or girl) definitely has been pulling its weight. So please consider him or her for your class of, let’s say, 2037ish. If you leave before then, it’d be great if you could just leave the next person a post-it.
Thanks
October 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am
My wife and I are expecting our first child next spring, Julianne. Can I set up a meeting with you now to discuss when they can start at UW?
–Hopefully– by the time this becomes a real issue, I will still remember how annoying it was when my parents tried to do things like that to me.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Shoot - 23 - beat me to it! Now I’ll have to make a call to Berkeley!
October 24th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Jeez, Berkeley? Total safety school
I feel it’s best to send messages like these to ALL universities early on… This does occasionally present a problem when the crazies (Bob Jones University, who ironically like to be called BJU, and Liberty University) actually want to meet with you.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Ouch.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:33 am
**Parents negotiating startup packages for assistant professors?**
Rien — Spouses do that sometimes :-). I have heard one such apocryphal story…
October 24th, 2008 at 11:53 am
So, who called? A colleague of Julianne?
October 24th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Jeff @9 - is this any worse than calling the alumni foundation and implying that a donation might be doubled if things go a certain way wink wink?
Different norms apply. Alumni associations and university foundations and the like exist to raise money from the public, so a member of the public calling about a money situation is not, in and of itself, utterly inappropriate. (The offer of money for a hiring decision is wrong, of course.) An unsolicited call to a department’s grad admissions office is pretty much only appropriate for an applicant.
October 25th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Maybe one of my parents calling you wasn’t enough. If both my parents called, it would’ve looked more serious. Yeah, really serious.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:36 am
I am applying to your department, and I was talking to my mom about it the other day.
I don’t think she would, but suddenly I’m filled with a cold dread……
October 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Wait till the helicopter parents start calling about grant proposals.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
applying — I think you’re safe. The student could be heard in the background.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Wow. Just wow.