I’m so sorry that you have to deal with this situation and I understand how it may be frustrating! The resounding message I have for you, though, is to not worry!
I didn’t visit a single college before I applied because I come from a family with low income and traveling just to see colleges si simply fiancnaily unfeasible. Now, our roles are a bit switched here wherein I was completely independent in my college application process (unless you count CC, in which case I was extremely dependent on and am still eternally grateful for) and never once really spoke to my parents about their thoughts on colleges as neither had ever really attended one. Yours is a bit stickier as they outright don’t want to help but the end result is the same. You may think you’re on your own but you aren’t because you have this amazing community for support and guidance! I wrote multiple Why ____ essays and was able to write them without ever stepping foot onto a single college campus. How? Thanks to technology, you don’t really have to. The main purpose of those essays are to get a deeper understanding of who you are, not who they are. The colleges know the programs they have and how nice the campus is, they just want to know what you could contribute and would garner from an education at so-and-so college. Browse through the websites of the colleges you really like, learn more about them, take the virtual tours if available or if not just watch tons of videos on YouTube of the campus (there’s a ton of them for each university). Even though I wasn’t able to have my parents’ guidance through this hectic process nor visit any campuses, I was blessed with acceptances at Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Notre Dame and others along with wait lists at Columbia, Brown, UChicago, and Vanderbilt. I have no doubt in my mind that you can do it too!
Now on the other issue of financial aid, I am not sure if I’m reading something wrong. Has no one else noticed that $65,000 for total family income usually means HUGE financial aid packages from most top tier schools? This is literally from Harvard’s site: “And, if your family earns less than $65,000 per year, your parents pay nothing for you to attend Harvard. It is simply our effort to make sure you and your family know you can afford to attend Harvard.” If you manage to get into these schools which are mostly need-blind, you won’t have to really worry about your parents not paying for your college because they won’t be expected to. The hard part is just getting in!
Either way, you can still visit schools as an impressive number of them have fly ins which you should really do as they pay for it and you can get the feel you want from the colleges. Here’s a link to a list of these: http://blog.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/2014-college-fly-in-programs/
And there’s a few more on this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1761401-2015-fly-in-programs-and-diversity-open-houses.html
Best of luck bud! Feel free to PM me if you need any personal advice or help 