As college acceptance letters drop in mailboxes for the Class of 2012 next month, there's something parents might consider doing now. Back off.

If you wrote your kid's college application essay, or you think nothing of rushing to campus to mediate your child's squabble with a roommate, there's a name for you: helicopter parents.

Loosely defined, helicopter parents are the baby boomer moms and dads who virtually accompany their offspring to campus, monitoring and intervening, fussing and fretting.

College administrators have their favorite anecdotes: the parents who call every morning to roust their student; the ones who call to make sure their kid wears a coat when it's cold.

And then there's this: One UCLA administrator recalls that when he was at another institution, a mother of triplets arrived for orientation with her brood — and never left. It took a month for administrators to coax her from the dorm room.

Closer, intense relationships between parent and child, aided by technology such as cell phones and the Internet, fuel the phenomenon, say college administrators.

"My concern is, at what point are these young people going to fend for themselves?" said Julie Lythcott-Haims, associate vice provost/dean of freshmen at Stanford University. "I think at some point, these young people are going to realize they lack the resiliency or coping skills to survive."

On the University of California, Davis, campus one recent sunny morning, freshman Mark Mislang said he felt a little scared when his parents dropped him off in August, but it was nothing he couldn't quickly overcome.

"I want to be independent," said 19-year-old Mislang. "I want to make my own decisions in life."

His parents, who live in the East Bay, are there for advice on matters such as relationships and handling stress, he said. But that's it.

Some researchers believe helicopter tales are overblown.

The College Board cosponsored a survey of 2,000 college-bound seniors in 2006 to find out how students perceived parental involvement. Thirty percent of the responses actually sought more parental involvement, and only 6 percent wanted less. Most were generally satisfied.

What degree of involvement is healthy is debatable, said Steven Graff, director of admissions and enrollment services at the College Board. "But in many communities, families aren't any different than they were 20 years ago. There's just been these extremes," he said.

At the Des Georges household in Land Park, the mail gets close scrutiny these days as 18-year-old Colette Des Georges anticipates letters from nine colleges, mostly in Southern California.

Still in her high school uniform, Colette Des Georges and her mother, 47-year-old Leslie Des Georges, sat at their kitchen table on a recent afternoon, chatting about the upcoming college experience.

Mom is attuned to her oldest child's emerging independence.

"I didn't write her essay," Leslie Des Georges said, "but I had to push on the deadline stuff."

Colette Des Georges spent a month on the Stanford University campus for a summer program last year and kept track of her meal ticket and her cell phone because she realized no one else would.

"I really didn't expect you to do as well as you did," Leslie Des Georges said to her daughter.

"That's the allure of college, being on your own," Colette Des Georges said. "If I had to call every night, that takes away from the college experience."

On the Davis campus, recently, air traffic overhead seemed devoid of hovering parents.

Jeannette Harbert 19, shoved her bicycle into a rack to lock it outside her dorm.

She's heard about parents who will implore their kids to come home, even driving two hours to pick them up for a Sunday dinner, then returning them afterward, Harbert said.

Her mother lives in San Diego and she respects their distance, she said.

As a show of independence, she and a friend chose their own apartment for their sophomore year and made all the arrangements without parents.

"If she called me every day, I'd say, 'Mom, I'm in college now,"' Harbert said. "If she was always there, I'd be relying on her."

At the Palo Alto, Calif., Stanford campus, Lythcott-Haims works with freshmen — 1,650 this year — and their parents.

She estimates 30 percent of parents are overly involved, a figure that she sees increasing 2 or 3 percent annually. At least half the class talks to parents daily, either through e-mail or by phone, she said.

She suspects some parents fill out student questionnaires, answering queries like, "What kind of roommate do you want?"

They obtain passwords to electronically access their child's school records. They demand to meet with professors, with or without the student present.

"We know that parents love their children," Lythcott-Haims said. "We try to be respectful of that, so we invite them to partner with us to help the student grow up."

She suggests that baby boomers spent their college years questioning authority and advocating, which is what they continue to do with their children.

At UCLA, probably one of the most definitive surveys on the subject was launched last year by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program.

"We wanted to see if parental involvement has anything to do with subsequent college performance," said John Pryor, the program director.

Most students believed their parents were doing the right thing, he said. "The interesting thing is there was a percentage that said their parents were not involved enough."

Colette's college years will parallel the study, but she already has an idea about her own outcome.

"I'm sure I'm going to burn some dishes," she said about her rookie cooking skills. "I know I still have a lot of things I have to do on my own."