Many years ago, when I headed off to college, I had just one living parent and one surviving grandparent. Barring some unforeseen tragedy, my oldest son should ship off to his still-unknown alma mater not only with both me and his mother above ground but also both of his grandmothers. I hope and pray that they survive the next four years.

What has me so worried? It’s a study I ran across from biology professor Mike Adams of Eastern Connecticut State University who found a shocking fact based on two decades of tracking his own students:  College is highly fatal to grandmothers.

Grannies, it seems, are 10 times more likely to die right before a midterm than any other time and nearly 20 times as likely to die before finals. Even more puzzling is the fact that weaker pupils’ grandmothers are a lot frailer than those of ‘A’ students.

When no exam was imminent for a student of his, there were an average 0.04 grandmother fatalities per 100 students. But the stress of exams for grandparents of the worst students seems to have been too much in many cases, making them 55 times as likely to die.

Since my son didn’t apply to any colleges in Connecticut, I was holding out hope that this was a strictly regional phenomenon and that my mom and mother-in-law would be unaffected. Professor Adams quickly disabused me of this notion. Even studying abroad, it seems, wouldn’t change the grim calculus: In England the phenomenon is called “Graveyard Grannies” and in France “Chere Grand’mere.”

I’m happy to report that, at 75 and 80, they’re in fine health for their ages. If they weren’t rooting for my son to make the Dean’s List, though, they sure will be after reading this.