Advice Needed

Parents Corner
1

<p>I am a rising senior (current junior) who has done exceptionally well in school and on standardized tests. As such, while I understand that no school is a "lock", no school, with the exception of something like Juliard (which isn't what I'm looking for) is truly out of reach. I plan to major in engineering, and as such, currently MIT is at the top of my list.</p>

<p>The problem is, my parents are absolutely opposed to me applying to Stanford and Caltech, because they do not want me to go west. While those two schools my first choice, I would say that they are both definitely in my top 4. If I am not lucky enough to get into MIT, and didn't even get the chance to apply to Stanford and Caltech, I would be very disappointed with myself. I feel like I would have been missing out on a great opportunity, due to no fault of my own.</p>

<p>So my question is: How do I get my parents to allow me to apply? What should I say? And be honest, is my want to apply to these schools unreasonable?</p>

2

<p>They don’t want you to go west? Let me guess, they want you closer to home. There really isn’t a rational argument against that. </p>

<p>I dunno, make a deal with them saying that if you go to school out west then you’ll give them 5% of your future paychecks for all eternity or somethin’.</p>

3

<p>That is difficult as we said the same thing, felt too young to be that far away. We did let her apply . If she had gotten a good offer we might have changed our minds. So apply see what happens, sometimes when it is all before you things change. Good luck for MIT.Look at WPI, and RPI might get some money.</p>

4

<p>I would ask your parents to let you apply, but let them know you are not assuming it means they are agreeing to let you go to CA. If you don’t apply now then the option is gone. A year is a long time, come next April they may change their mind about letting you go out west. You may be able to demonstrate to them in your senior year how responsible you are, which would make them feel more comfortable about letting you go so far away for college. Tell them by applying, it’s only costing you the application fees.</p>

5

<p>It might help to mention to them that both Stanford and Caltech are near major metropolitan areas that are easy to fly to and that weather would not be an obstacle to getting in and out of those areas, year-round.</p>

<p>Thus, if there were an emergency at home, or if you faced an emergency while at college, and it was necessary for somebody to travel to the other one’s location, it might actually be easier to accomplish this if you were at Stanford or Caltech, rather than, say, Cornell, which East Coast parents tend to find perfectly acceptable but which is in the middle of nowhere and is buried under snow for much of the year. </p>

<p>I live in Maryland. I have a son who is a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego and a daughter who is an undergraduate at Cornell. Neither owns a car. In the event of an emergency that required one of them to come home unexpectedly, my daughter would have a more difficult time making suitable travel arrangements than my son would. And in the event of an emergency that required me to travel to one of the communities where they go to school, it would be no more difficult for me to get to San Diego than to Ithaca, and if it were winter, getting to San Diego would actually be easier.</p>

<p>By the way, none of this means that you shouldn’t apply to Cornell. Of course you should at least consider putting it on your list. It has an excellent engineering school.</p>

6

<p>They’re not asking much for footing your bills. There’s nothing out west that you can’t obtain at a school closer to home. Quit whining and grow up.</p>

7

<p>Everyone has dreams, even at age 17. It is a shame we give it up when we get older. There is nothing wrong in having a dream and trying to pursue it. If we all felt there is no need to venture out just because we have everything we need close to home, then we would never have gone to the moon.</p>

8

<p>While I might have said it more delicately, I tend to agree with nunya. ;)</p>

<p>I’m not sure what your parents’ financial situation is, but it’s not just tuition they’d be dealing with if you headed west - it’s airfare for when you return home etc… plus, they probably just want to be able to get to you easily if they have to. They aren’t doing this to punish you or make you miserable (at least I hope not!)</p>

9

<p>Consider Olin, too. </p>

<p>It’s hard to know how to address your parents’ concerns about going west unless you specify what they are. When I was applying to colleges, my mother asked me not to apply to a west coast school I was interested in because of the expense of flying me back and forth. Seemed reasonable to me.</p>

10

<p>I would talk to your parents and tell them that you really want to see if you get accepted and what they may offer you financially. That it is not a commitment to attend but rather you don’t want to miss an opportunity, because ther is this small window that only happens once in a lifetime.
But, with that said, I would definitely shoot for MIT and RPI.</p>

11

<p>35 years ago, my parents said essentially the same thing to me: “There’s nothing you can get at Stanford that you can’t get at Harvard or Yale that we’re willing to pay for.” That was the end of the conversation. It was their right. I never gave it a second thought. I also went to Stanford for grad school (and was perfectly happy to have gone elsewhere as an undergrad).</p>

<p>Stanford and Cal Tech are great universities, and certainly in the top echelon for engineering. If I were your parents, I would let you apply there. But, really, they are not so superior to the colleges you will get into in the East if you would have been accepted there that it’s worth fighting about. The weather is pleasant, and it’s far from home.</p>

12

<p>Closer to home. Hmm, what does that really mean … and why is that important to the parents? “We’ll can afford to pay for MIT but not flights to California” doesn’t make any sense. The big questions IMHO is why the parents want BuddyMcA close to home.</p>

<p>From a practical standpoint, go ahead and apply. One never knows how admissions and FA will go. If the choice comes down to Stanford or SUNY Purchase …</p>

13

<p>I agree that since you’re interested you should apply. You never know what your playing field will be like until after you’re accepted and can see what the financial situation is with each of the colleges you were accepted to.</p>

<p>What’s the motivation for your parents wanting you on the east coast? If it’s financial, then conclusions on that can’t even be made at this point since you don’t know the costs yet. If it’s because they think ‘you’ can’t handle being far away, they should stop and realize how sharp you’ve been so far such that you’re even applying to this level of colleges and realize that in fact, you can handle it. If it’s because ‘they’ just don’t want you to be so far away, then you’ll have to have the gentle talk with them about how it’s ‘your’ time to spread your wings, grow, mature, etc. and they need to enable you to do that, be fair to you, and not block the path.</p>

14

<p>Maybe your parents feel as I do? We live on the east coast, and I also do not my kids going to school on the west coast. Maybe I am still traumatized by 9/11, but I want my kids to be able to jump in a car and get home w/i 24 hours. Also still traumatized by shootings at VT, so I want to be able to get to them fast in case of an emergency. I am not saying my position is entirely rational. But that is how I feel.</p>

15

<p>Buddy,</p>

<p>I’m gonna give you some advice that has been given to lots of people here on CC. </p>

<p>You look like you are planning your college selection strategy from the top (reaches) down. While dreaming is fun (all of the schools you listed are reaches for everybody), more time should be spent on the selection of one or 2 safety schools and 3 or so matches before you focus on the reaches. </p>

<p>I have looked at your posting history and while you do have impressive stats, your ECs are not necessarily geared towards getting you admitted to any of the schools you have listed. If you go looking around on CC for threads about admission to MIT you will find that they prefer applicants with more unusual ECs. This is not taking anything away from what you have done, but Vals, 2300 SATs, etc. are a dime a dozen to them. That is why I am suggesting you focus on the safety and match schools.</p>

<p>That being said, you might want to consider other things besides rankings for choosing schools.</p>

<p>For example, how important is the opportunity to work on important research as an undergrad? Some lesser schools will give better opportunities to star incoming students.</p>

<p>Another important consideration is the quality internships. As one of many 4.0 2300 SAT students at MIT/Stanford/CalTech you will have much stiffer competition for the best internships. They aren’t exactly a constitutional right either at these schools. OTOH, if you go to a school where you are near the top of the class, besides getting the best of potential research projects, you will be more competitive for the best internships available. </p>

<p>And there is always the matter of money. Don’t know your family finances, but none of these schools are cheap. Often safety schools are chosen based upon likelyhood of generous FA when that is a consideration.</p>

<p>This brings me back to your original issue of parental approval for west coast schools. Right now, if you presented me what you have posted here, I’d say you are trophy hunting, not planning a career. Now if you brought me a unique program at one of these schools that makes it worth stretching the bounds on, I might listen a bit better to why this makes more sense than what has been previously discussed. </p>

<p>What I’m saying here is that you need a plan (specific course of study) with safety, reach, and match schools that fit it. To put it in engineering thinking, you can’t always design the perfect solution. You need to design solutions that fits the objective of the customer with the flexibility to accommodate limits on materials, time, budget, etc. Sometimes you can sell the client on a solution outside of the initial requirements, but you must bring in alternatives that are within the design requirements to demonstrate the superiority of the “different” solution.</p>

16

<p>I already have my safeties etc. picked out. I pretty much know all the schools I am applying to, its just that I at least want to get the opportunity to apply to the aforementioned California schools.</p>

17

<p>Well if it is only a family matter here, you have the ability to apply to these schools (assuming you can scratch up the application fees). It does not take a parental signature to submit an application.</p>

<p>However, if you are unable to convince your parents to pay for the operation by May 1, 2010 (here I am assuming you don’t have $200K in your personal account), you have a problem.</p>

<p>You have not presented any of your parents’ reasoning on their position, so really none of us here can help you address their concerns. And until you can get inside their heads and understand their thinking you will not make any progress. And once you do understand their thinking, you may have to accept that you cannot change that, as some personal experiences and cultural norms don’t change.</p>