The telephone rang a few minutes ago. The caller ID said “College Admissions”.

Here we go again, I thought.

Our son is a junior in high school and in addition to the expected inundation of college literature via US Mail that makes election season junk mail look like nothing, even though we requested no college cold calls, we are getting them anyway. And then there are the hundreds of email solicitations.

So yes, back to what I am not comfortable with: these colleges and universities are cold calling minors.

They come in at odd times, like just now. Like other types of cold calls they are not particularly welcome and this latest invasion is enough for us to check out https://www.nomorobo.com/ as suggested by friends.

Lately we have had India generated robo-calls from McAfee, predatory credit card companies calling about who knows what services  (they ask for people that don’t live here and never have- they must have a script that tells them to ask for random first names), bogus breast cancer charities, bogus veterans’ charities and my new favorite to tell me I am pre-approved for a “MedAlert” or medical alert device. The MedAlert people have called so often I filed a complaint with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission.)

But colleges and universities cold calling is a brave, new, and somewhat unwelcome telemarketing world for me. Most schools have current students who call. Take Temple University for example. They called a couple of weeks ago. The student sounded bored out of his tree, could NOT pronounce even our son’s first name, and mumbled to the point he was unitellagable.  So much for good first impressions, right?

But today, Marquette University in Wisconsin took it to a whole new level I take issue with. They are paying for a professional telemarketing firm (they called themselves a professional research firm but it is the same thing) to cold call prospective students.

Yes, that’s right, a telemarketing firm calling on behalf of Marquette University wanting to speak to our child. We as parents have not given them permission to call, the child they are calling doesn’t want to talk to them. And I am sorry, even if Marquette was on any list they wouldn’t be now because of this.

And as a marketing idea, come on do these schools even know teenagers today? They communicate primarily via text and social media, so are they trying to call kids via Snap Chat as well?  Kids today barely speak on the phone with family members, so why on earth do these schools think they are going to speak to their cold-callers?

I might get these calls occurring after a kid takes a campus tour, but as a preemptive strike?  Not so much.

As a trend this is bothersome and borderline creepy.  Every once in a while I ask these callers for their home phone numbers so I can return the favor and bother them.

Sign me tired of all unwanted solicitation calls.