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College environments today are a lot different from yesteryear. For those who have an idyllic vision of what your child will be experiencing, you need to read Susan Kinzie's  2005 Washington Post article.

Here's a small sample:

"The number one medication in college is antidepressants," said Richard Kadison of Harvard University,
 whose book about the growing mental health crisis at colleges was published last year. "It's surpassed 
birth control pills."
 
At Georgetown this fall, a student drowned in an accident in the Potomac River and a senior died in a fire 
at his apartment. A student was killed at Johns Hopkins University this winter, just months after another 
was stabbed to death. And the body of a University of Maryland student was found floating in the 
Anacostia River this semester, days before a senior died in a fire.

"We have an idealized notion that this is a carefree time," said Linda Clement, vice president for student 
affairs at U-Md. For many, college is the best time in life -- the most fun, the most exploratory, the most 
illuminating -- but it brings challenges, too.
 
Kevin Kruger used to have that job at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he was always 
on edge, he said. Any late phone call would trigger a surge of adrenaline. "When the phone rings, you 
don't know what's on the other end . . . suicide, rape, knifing, fight. . . .
 
"I can't even begin to count the number of times at 3 in the morning I threw on jeans, drove to campus, dealt
with whatever was there, maybe 10 minutes after a student was stabbed. Or a kid up on a tower trying to jump 
off the tower."
 
Deans of student life came along early in the 20th century when university presidents didn't want to deal with 
disciplinary problems, said Kruger, who is associate executive director of NASPA Student Affairs Administrators 
in Higher Education. As colleges grew, the deans acted like parents, setting strict rules: Girls visiting boys must 
keep their feet firmly planted on the floor at all times. Then came the 1960s and '70s, drugs and Vietnam and the 
sexual revolution, and students demanded to be treated as adults.
 
The job isn't getting any easier, for a bunch of reasons: Overprotective parents. Terrorist threats. Lawsuits. 
And teenagers who get to campus already burned out from stressful high schools.
 
Most schools are reporting increasing numbers of students seeking counseling, and more freshmen arrive 
already taking psychiatric medications.
 
Some of those increases come because students today are more likely to report problems and ask for help 
and schools are more likely to offer and promote counseling.
 
But psychiatric drugs such as Prozac that popped up in the 1980s and '90s have changed the culture of 
campus life; they've made it possible for many teenagers who wouldn't have made it to college in the past 
to get in.
 
In the past 25 years or so, Kadison said, the likelihood of suffering depression on campus has doubled, 
serious thoughts about committing suicide have tripled and sexual assaults have quadrupled.
 
Now, one in 10 students seriously considers suicide in college. Nearly half get so depressed that they 
can't function, according to the American College Health Association, and every year, about 1,400
college students die from injuries related to drinking alcohol.