My perspective is somewhat unique, since I have a close association with today's high schoolers seeking to get into highly competitive colleges. I get to know their parents, too. Plus, I scour the College Confidential discussion forum several times every day to check the pulse of students and families. Sometimes that pulse feels like tachycardia!

Anyway, my daughter agreed with me about the ongoing angst that she sees among her students as they aspire to get into the schools of their dreams, many of which are Ivy League and other Top-20 institutions. We discussed what the process was like for her, when she applied to college, back in the late Eighties.

At that time, I had already begun my admissions counseling career, so I was able to give her some sound fundamental approaches to her admissions approach. That was easy for me because she was focused on one particular school about which she knew a lot and where some close friends of hers attended.

Thus, she applied Early Decision to that one school, was accepted, and graduated with honors in English four years later. She has since gone on for her master's and has helped many of her students with their admissions quests. Maybe she got my counselor gene.

One particularly amusing part of our discussion involved my recounting of my own admissions process, which could be easily referred to as “falling backward into college." I've droned on in previous posts here about how, because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I mused that I wanted to get into the then-fledgling computer programming field. Concurrently, as a result of my ability to transfer my baseball pitching skills to tennis (because I got cut from my high school's baseball ream on the last day of practice), I was recruited by a small DIII college not that far from my home. So, I went there.

My parents had zero input into my college decision. However, they did sacrifice during difficult economic times to pay for my higher education expenses. But, as far as helping me focus on a path to making a well-considered college choice, they were at a loss, other than giving me moral support. That was important, of course, but compared to parental involvement today, they were at a tremendous disadvantage, since they had never been to college.

Like many issues today in our hyper-kinetic, uptight world, the process of college admissions can be a huge pile of anxiety for both applicants and their parents. The applicant is up tight about finding the right college and getting in. Parents are worried not only about their son or daughter finding the right school and his/her getting in but also about how to pay the astronomical price most schools require. It's a bittersweet, love-hate experience that can cause friction within a family and many sleepless nights and stress-ridden days for the poor high school senior.

So, what should a parent's role be during this onerous process? As I mentioned, I can speak from experience, since I was the father during my daughter's (and son's) college admissions cycles. Of course, I had a distinct advantage over many fathers out there, owing to my independent college admissions counselor experience. Obviously, I knew how to handle the complexities of the regimen and was able to take a lot of pressure off my kids as they executed their various application steps. If they had a question, ol' Dad was just in the other room. However, those of you parents reading this are probably notadmission counselors, so you're wondering what you should be doing and how you should be thinking about all this.

Along these lines, I found an older article about this very subject and thought you might enjoy reading a parental perspective that may be closer to your own than mine was. Jennifer Armour, writing on La Jolla Patch, has some superb observations about parents and the college admissions process. Let's take a look at some highlights.

College Admissions: What's a Parent To Do?

[Last year], many colleges received a record-breaking number of applications. The stakes are high, and so is the level of stress.

I am a proud member of Generation X—a former latchkey kid who was raised to be self-reliant, independent minded and driven. As a child, I did my own laundry, cooked many of my meals and packed my lunch for school. My homework was just that—mine. And when it came time for me to choose a college, I alone did the research and completed the necessary applications.

Twenty-five years later, my 17-year-old daughter is searching for her perfect college. And my challenge—surprise, surprise—is not to become overly involved in the process. You'd think that someone raised the way I was would have no problem stepping back, would find it easy to let my child be completely in charge of this phase of her life. You'd be wrong …

… Unfortunately, numbers aren't much better closer to home … With statistics like these, is it any surprise that parents such as myself have a hard time sitting quietly on the sidelines? We want to be involved, feel the need to be. But how?

[A survey,] The American Freshman: National Norms 2010, indicates that the emotional health of college freshman is at an all-time low. In the survey, 200,000 full-time students entering four-year colleges from across the United States were asked to rank their current state of mental health. Only 52 percent classified it as being above average. And this was after they had been accepted to college.

What about before college acceptance? Are high school upperclassmen equally stressed and depressed? If so, can a parent's participation in the college admissions process heighten that stress?

All of this was weighing heavily on my mind a few weeks ago when my daughter and I attended college night at her high school. Thankfully, I wasn't walking into the process cold. The school's college counseling department, all too aware that anxious parents want to know what is going on as soon as possible, has been holding informational meetings since the fall of my daughter's freshman year. But this event, held at the start of the second semester of junior year, is the official kickoff of the admissions process.

Upon arrival, we were given a packet that included our student's transcript, a sheet describing the college admissions software Naviance, and a timeline that listed dates for standardized testing, AP exams and the first meeting with the counselor.

We were also handed two surveys, one to be completed by my daughter, the other by my husband or me … My husband and I will answer questions such as these:

• In what ways has your child surprised you? Does he/she excel at something you never thought possible?
• Discuss the personal growth in your child that you have noticed since his/her freshman year of high school up to today.
• Do you have any concerns about the college planning process? What are they? How significant a role will financial aid play in your decision making process about where to attend college?

I left the meeting feeling very good, sure that my daughter will be in capable hands, and relieved to have at least one task that I am responsible for completing … I told my daughter that I was excited about turning this process over to her and her counselor. I explained that I did not want to be cast in the role of the bad guy and feared that was exactly what was going to happen. My opinions seemed to be welcome as long as they matched hers. But as soon as I disagreed or offered a different point of view, I was labeled as being difficult, or worse yet, pushy. I reiterated that I understood that this search, this process, was for her—not me.

And then I went on to describe in great detail why I love large universities.

Baby steps.

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So, you can see that even the most experienced parent can have his or her uncertainties. However, the key is to keep touch with the pulse of current happenings in the college admissions world and not be afraid to ask questions. Perhaps the most important answer to the question, “What's a parent to do?" is: Stay in touch with that applicant in your family. Talk to him or her. Understand what he or she wants. Also, be sure that they know how you feel about the situation.

For those of you who want a broader parental perspective, check out this College Confidential forum thread: How helicopter parents are ruining college students. There you'll find such comments as:

– As pointed out by the one set of parents interviewed for the article, it is crucial to teach your child from a young age how to be independent and make good decisions. A commonality I've noticed in the helicopter parents of college-aged kids that I know is that they were quite busy and stressed while their kids were growing up. Very often it's much safer, more reliable, and generally easier to do things ourselves rather than to let our kids do it. So the busy parents too often choose the easy way of just taking charge of the tasks so they can cross them off their long to-do list and move on. But their kids miss out on learning opportunities. Then all of sudden the awareness hits the parent that their son or daughter is not well-prepared to be out on his or her own, so they panic and helicopter.

– Hmmm. When people lived in multigenerational family homes, was this also a big problem? I agree that there is probably an increase in overinvolved parenting, but I also think that instantaneous electronic communication is simply changing the ways families function and communicate. If my daughter calls me as she's walking across campus to complain that the dining hall was out of tea, is that overdependence? Or is it just that she feels comfortable making conversation in the same way she did when we lived in the same house?

– 34 years ago, my friends and I found it quite amusing that one of us not only had a phone in her room, but used it to call her parents once a week! We attributed this to her being “a sweet Catholic girl."

My D has been at college for not quite two weeks now, and we have texted daily, emailed frequently, had at least 4 phonecalls, and Skyped for an hour once. Or in other words, we are doing many of the same things we did before she left. The only difference is the Skype call.

It doesn't feel odd or overprotective. It just feels like we want to maintain our relationship with our kid. As someone wrote, modern technology has changed the way families work. I like it.

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Keep in mind the old definition of Total Quality: mutually understood requirements. Once your and your child's requirements are understood and you can issue a “joint communique" of sorts, you'll be on your way to a happy ending. Try it. You'll like it!

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Be sure to check out all my admissions-related articles on College Confidential.