You can put them on yourself, but it is very difficult to get them tight enough by yourself. With a partner:
1. Have wraps already rolled up, preferably pretty tight.
2. Sit down on a bench and keep your legs straight the entire time during wrapping, this is important to get them tight.
3. Place the loose end below your knee about 1.5x the width of the band or so, just whatever, and hold that with your hand.
4. Your partner will begin wrapping, while you hold the loose end with your fingertips, once he overlaps the loose end it will stay in place and you can let go.
5. I prefer to wrap them super tight, getting as much stretch as possible out of the wrap while wrapping. Overlap each wrap by 1/2 the width of the wrap, most wraps have a line down the middle, just lay the edge of the next layer on that line.
6. Continue wrapping until about 1.5x the width of the band is over the top of your knee, then you can start going back down.
7. Once you get to where there is a little over one full wrap length left, place your hand on your knee, I usually have my pinky on my knee holding my fingers rigid, with your forefinger being up top, then your partner will make that last wrap over your hand, this way you have some slack in there. Then pull the end of the wrap through the gap you created with your hand and you are set!!
8. Repeat other leg
At first it will feel really weird if you get them super tight, your feet will tingle and you wont be able to feel them for the most part due to lack of blood flow lol. What really sucks and is frustrating is when you are wrapping if you let go of the roll and it totally unrolls, makes it much harder to roll when you have to pull a couple feet of wrap over the leg each time! This summer I was doing a squat workout trying out some wraps, I had them so tight I actually popped blood vessels in my calves, they were pretty bruised up, took me awhile to figure out what it was from lol. Also, as soon as you are done with your set with them on, you pretty much want to rip them off right away, the pressure can get pretty intense sometimes.
I hope that explanation made sense, it is pretty simple once you get it figured out, if a part doesnt make sense just let me know and I will try to make it more clear.
I have heard that too, since the definition of parallel is when the top of your knee is parallel to the crease in your hip, the wraps will make the top of your knee actually appear higher than it is, so you might not have to go down that extra .5-1 inch!! Every little bit counts!!