<p>Listen to your parents. Go ahead and apply regular to NU but understand that they are clearly telling you there is a budget. If you don’t know what they budget is…ask them…now. But do understand that they have clearly told you they cannot afford for you to go there as a full pay student. You may very well have to give up NU even if you are accepted. You would be smart to stop right now and evaluate the list of colleges where you are applying and make sure that given your stats and your parents budget that you have schools on the list you are willing to attend and they feel they can afford with high probability. </p>
<p>Parents HAVE to take the long view. They have other kids to educate. They have a retirement to consider and things do happen. I ended up unemployed at the beginning of the recession in the middle of S1’s college…with two more kids coming up behind him and overlap years. We took a huge financial hit…but not enough for colleges to pony up more money. I thank my lucky stars everyday that we set a budget for the kids that was manageable and that the kids understood what that meant. It’s tough for kids to put money in context, but thankfully your parents are trying to explain it to you. Good parents do, and put parameters in place for their kids to navigate.</p>