Another parent, whose son is a student at an Ivy League college, said: “He’s not striving to meet our standards, they’re his own.” The father, whom I cannot name because he is my patient, said: “I keep reminding him that perfect is the enemy of good, and he says, ‘Yeah, but good’s not enough to get into med school.’”

Hannah Miller, a Columbia graduate student, is candid about her perfectionism. “When it’s not out of control, it’s a good thing to have. When it overwhelms me, which is less often than it did when I was an undergraduate, I have to force myself to step back and make an accurate assessment of how important the task is and consider it thoughtfully rather than emotionally — like, how good does it have to be?”

When she finds herself procrastinating until a deadline, she repeats a maxim favored by a high school teacher: Do the best that you can in the time that you have.

Ms. Miller said that when she’s stressed and anxious she turns to her close friends for comfort and support, and also to her mother, whose perfectionism, like her own, is mostly self-prescribed. Mother and daughter share a kind of presentational perfectionism, especially about public speaking. Ms. Miller said that her mother “gets over it the same way she tells me to: Prepare thoroughly and it will carry you through.”

If you are a parent concerned about perfectionist tendencies in your child, the questions posed by the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, used in the study, may be informative. Among its 44 items, scaled from 1 (disagree) to 7 (agree), are statements like these: When I am working on something, I can’t relax unless it’s perfect; The people around me expect me to succeed at everything I do; The better I do, the better I am expected to do. The scale is not a clinical instrument, but the questions might be a good starting point for discussion.

It’s hard to tell how much social media is affecting your child’s self-image; many feel enormous pressure to be perfect off line, too. And it’s difficult to know what, if anything, parents can do about it, beyond offering empathy, reassurance and emotional support.

If they’ve been here before, remind them that perfect wasn’t the goal; good enough was, and it did the trick. (“Remember the way you felt before your SATs, and how well you did?”) Make sure it’s their perfectionism you’re worried about, not yours. And stay in touch without hovering. If they seem really anxious for more than a week, suggest they seek counseling, or contact the school to ask whether the department of student life might sponsor a program about perfectionism.

And meanwhile, send care packages. It’s fine if they’re not perfect — they will still brighten your student’s day.