<p>Hi I know I am not a parent but, I need some help. I live in California and I am Persian, so my whole family has this misconception that UCLA is the only and best school in the world (UCLA is a great school, just not for me). Anyways I need help convincing them to let me apply out of state, because if I were to apply only instate I would probably go to a UC and I DO NOT WANT THAT. I hate the public school system, even though I go to a public high school. I can't deal with a 100:1 student to teacher ratio. I also just really want/need to move out and go somewhere out of state. Frankly I don't care if it is a worse environment then LA or anything in Cali. I feel like there are a lot of opportunities out there and that I have a good chance for getting into some good schools. Seeing that you are all parents on this thread I was wondering if you could help me think of good reasons to convince my parents to let me go out of state. Their biggest concern is money, and I have told them that I will do my best to cover that (scholarships, tutoring, etc.). But anything else would be greatly appreciated. Thank You!</p>
<p>Well… your reasons seem to be (1) you would like to experience some other part of the country besides California, and (2) you want a smaller school experience. Is that right? Also, what year are you in high school? Is there something specific you want to study?</p>
<p>For a lot of students whose parents are immigrants, there is also a cultural issue where they don’t want their kids to go farther away geographically to school. Count your blessings if they are willing to let you live in a dorm (even at a UC school), things could be worse.</p>
<p>To see what schools have some reciprocity agreements with California, here is a link:</p>
<p>[Western</a> Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) | Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.wiche.edu/wue]Western”>Save On College Tuition | Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE))</p>
<p>If you want scholarship money, you need to find schools that (1) offer merit aid, and (2) where you are in the top quarter of their admitted stats. Do you know what your family’s EFC is (that is an indicator of how much need-based aid you also might be eligible for)?</p>
<p>You might be able to make an argument that with the fiscal crisis California is in right now, UC budget cuts are going to make a UC education less desirable/lower quality (and possibly more expensive?). I don’t live in CA and am not familiar with the details of all the budget issues and how they are being handled, but it wouldn’t surprise me if those were results of the situation there. You might try to track down news articles on this and show it to your parents for a reason why you should apply to some schools outside California.</p>
<p>Based on seeing lots of posts from other students who want to attend schools that are not what their parents might prefer, here are a few tips:</p>
<ul>
<li>Stay calm, reasoned, and rational. No matter what. Do NOT let purely emotional arguments be your main emphasis. (Sorry, but “I hate public schools” is emotional… but “I think I would learn better in a small class environment” is less emotional). Your don’t want to sounds like an immature teenager who just hates their life and is lashing out at their surroundings. If you can surprise your parents with your maturity and depth of analysis on this topic, you have a better chance at winning them over.</li>
<li>Make up a list of schools that include some that you like and some that they like. If you can find some that both like, all the better 
If you can get your parents to visit them with you, that is good. But be fair to them… visit the schools they like, and keep an open mind.</li>
<li>Just being realistic – you probably will have a harder time getting your parents to buy into East Coast schools. So take a good look on the west coast.</li>
<li>If you can enlist a family member (aunt, uncle) who might see it more your way to help convince your parents, do that. But again, you have to be calm and rational with them.</li>
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<p>You can go anywhere you want. You will be an adult soon. What you want is to have your parents continue to pay your way for what you want as opposed to what they want. It’s their money so why shouldn’t they spend it for what they want? Pay for what ever you want yourself. </p>
<p>When anyone looks for colleges, the start should be what that person can pay at school very likely to take him/her. You live with your parents and commute for that option which is usually the cheapest. Then you have other in state options and schools that may give you a scholarship. Then you have schools that your parents are willing to spend the money if they can afford. it.</p>
<p>Look at Momfromtexas’s thread on full ride scholarships. Get one of those and you can go OOS and pay for it yours self. With high stats, you might find some schools that will pay your way </p>
<p>You can also talk to your parents about what they can afford for college and tell them you want a smaller school than the UCs. That it has to be out of state, I don;t get. There may be some good in state options of that sort as well as out. If they are willing to pay the money for you to go out of state,then good for you.</p>
<p>UCLA is a very, very hard school to get into, and a lot of randomness seems to apply. You definitely need some other options anyway – but I’d encourage you to still apply to UCLA. Nothing will shut off discussion further than if you don’t get admitted. </p>
<p>Before going a lot further, you need to have some serious discussions with your folks about what financial support is available to you for college, and they need to understand that UCLA is no sure admit for any student. (And, as a Persian student in the LA/Valley area, you’re far, far from underrepresented.) </p>
<p>But you also need to figure out what you’re looking for in the way of a LAC experience, and what your gpa/test scores/extracurricular achievements suggest would be likely match schools. In the greater LA area, you’ve got Occidental and the Claremont colleges, Cal Tech, … depending on what you’re interested in, I’d guess that there ought to be at least SOME California LACs that will fit the bill. Insisting that you will only consider out-of-state schools is a good way to set up a conflict that is unnecessary. A good list will probably include some in-state schools, some out-of-state schools, and possibly several UC campuses. Again, so much depends on finances. You may want to go to a $55K a year OOS private for which you’re not eligible for financial aid, but if your folks are not willing to spend more than the cost of UCLA, that’s going to limit your options significantly.</p>
<p>I am definitely going to apply to instate schools and UC’s but it is just so hard to talk to them. They won’t think about other colleges, or just the idea of my moving away like what intparent said. It’s hard for them to understand that I am actually growing up and moving on. They did not have support when they came here and they feel that the same thing will happen to me if I move away. I know it will be hard, but I will still be able to cope and make friends. As for me, I truly understand that it is a big concern, but if I have the chance to go to a great school, I am not going to let finances be the reason why I don’t go there (<em>hoping that doesn’t happen</em>).</p>
<p>Mmm… that is a pretty immature attitude, IMHO. “I am not going to let finances be the reason why I don’t go there”. There are many, many students who can’t go to the college they would most want to because of finances. And many, many students who impoverish themselves and/or their families when they choose schools they can’t afford. While I am sometimes sympathetic with students in your position, you strike me as pretty juvenile in your perspective.</p>
<p>If you want to keep working on this, one argument you could make to them is that they left their families/communities to achieve the life they wanted. Why shouldn’t you have the opportunity to do the same?</p>
<p>But… take a longer view. If you want to move somewhere else after finishing your degree, do it then. Get a degree in California that is likely to get you a good job, and make the move once you are done with college. This is only 4 years out of likely another 60 years of your life.</p>
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<p>Their concerns about finances are very legitimate. How will you pay for an out of state private school…or out of state public university…if you do not receive sufficient financial aid to do so? How much are your parents willing to contribute EACH year? Are you a tippy top student who might be eligible for merit aid someplace? </p>
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<p>Please listen to the financial restraints your parents have…and listen to them carefully. If you are unable to pay the bills, the school will not allow you to enroll/attend. If you don’t have the necessary finances you will NOT be ablt to “go there”. That is a fact.</p>
<p>You don’t mention any specific reasons for wanting to leave CA…or any specific destinations. CA is a HUGE state…the schools in one area are very different from those in other areas of the same state. There are smaller UC campuses than UCLA where you would perhaps have smaller classes. Also, once you start taking classes within YOUR major, you will likely find that the class sizes decrease substantially.</p>
<p>Take a longer broader view of this. Figure out a way to go to college within the budget established by your parents for undergrad school. Then spread your wings for grad school if you so choose.</p>
<p>Sorry…I was not trying to sound immature. It’s just that every time I bring up the topics they avoid it, and when I get them to talk about it they just shut me down, and it is frustrating. I really understand that money is an issue, and I don’t want my parents to go broke over college. To put it in perspective, assuming that you are parents or going to parents, imagine if your son or daughter was accepted to Harvard University and he/she got $15,000 worth of scholarships wouldn’t you do anything in your power to let them go there? I am not saying that I will get into Harvard or that I will get any amount of scholarship, but when you know you have that chance and every time you want to bring it up to your parents they just shut you up, eventually the whole college experience seems like a waste of time… I just want them to consider it</p>
<p>No, I would not risk my retirement or education for younger siblings for it. There is no “one college” that would be worth that. Not sure you want the advice being offered out here, though. You want what you want… you may not be “trying” to sound immature, but it is really coming through on every post. Sorry…</p>
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The short answer is NO. That would be $40K/year to pay. If I couldn’t afford $160K for college then the answer would be NO. Anyone who is competitive for Harvard can get into other excellent schools and, potentially, get scholarships.</p>
<p>Let’s not debate the merit of UCLA, but instead go back to OP’s desire - convincing his parents that there are other good schools out of state and it may not cost any more than UCLA.</p>
<p>In fact, it is true for both of my kids, they both were accepted to UC Berkeley and UCLA as safeties; but it turns out that the merit money from most of their OOS private schools are better, in fact, it is more expensive for them to attend public colleges. We didn’t qualify for financial aid, so all the Ivies are full-pay for us. </p>
<p>If OP’s stat is good, he can certainly get some merit scholarships. And if he qualifies for financial aid, that will even be better. He should let his parents know that financially California public colleges @ ~30K/yr and rising are bad deal (poor ROI) there are better and cheaper choices OOS colleges (with comparable undergrad ranking as UCLA) with max class-size under 40 and instructions taught by professors instead of grad-students.</p>
<p>Why do you think the OP is male? I am guessing female… but just intuition, no real evidence.</p>
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<p>First…Harvard does not give scholarships (which are merit awards). Harvard gives ONLY need based aid. </p>
<p>Second…even with $15K in grants (need based aid), there would be a balance in EXCESS of $35,000 for the family to pay. That is well more than the cost of attending an instate public university. It is also more than MANY families can afford to pay out of pocket…or are willing to pay out of pocket and/or with loans.</p>
<p>Third. I have yet to hear a compelling reason for your desire to go out of state…especially given the financial concerns your parents have expressed. I hope you are conveying your reasons better to THEM than you are conveying them HERE to us on this open forum.</p>
<p>Disclaimer…both of my kids went to college out of state…BUT…we had the financial resources to support this and they both had VERY good reasons for choosing the colleges they attended.</p>
<p>In terms of “reasons”, you will need to build a compelling argument why a particular school is so much better for you than what you can get at one of the UCs. You can’t be flippant about the financial concerns, but if you can get merit aid (maybe at a smaller and lower “ranked” school) it can turn out to be very beneficial.</p>
<p>Since both my Ds went OOS (to the same school) from NC, (when lots of OOS people dearly want to get into UNC-CH)…I have some experience with some of the lines of reasoning. D1 convinced us that she had a lot more opportunities for internships while she was in school, and her merit aid made the financial difference not so painful. She couldn’t have made a better choice for herself (graduates in a couple weeks), and is off to grad school for a Ph.D. program in the fall.</p>
<p>Her sister’s reasoning re: why the other univ was better for her than UNC wasn’t nearly as strong, but having them both at the same school for 2 years was a huge benefit for me as a parent. Again, she has loved her choice.</p>
<p>Money matters. A lot. You might get different answers on the student part of the board, but you’re asking parents who are grappling right now with the cost of college. Much as I love my D, a $55K a year LAC was just not in the feasible range for our family, even with a $10K or $15K merit scholarship. She’s very happy at an OOS public that came to about what our in-state flagship would have cost, and the vast majority of her classes have been under 40 students despite being on a huge campus. (That would greatly vary based on major choice, however.) </p>
<p>You need to start learning the difference between needs and wants, and possible and impractical. You may WANT to go to an expensive OOS LAC, but you don’t NEED to go to one. You may think it is entirely practical for your family to spend $160K-220K out of pocket to do so, but if they think that is not financially feasible given their other financial constraints, you need to learn to respect that or make the decision to fund it on your own via ROTC or going into the military and earning GI Bill credits that could help or winning some fabulous scholarship like the Intel or having such amazing stats that you qualify for one of the handful of full-ride scholarships that top LACs give out. After all, that’s just as feasible as your folks spending $200K plus on your undergraduate degree, isn’t it?</p>
<p>What are your stats? (maybe they’re high enough for big merit elsewhere)</p>
<p>What is your intended major/career? (perhaps UCLA isn’t best for that)</p>
<p>UCLA costs about $30k per year…will your parents pay $30k if you go elsewhere? Will they pay more? Will they pay less (or nothing)?</p>
<p>Right now, it’s not important to convince them to let you go elsewhere…decisions are a year from now. Right now, you need to focus on a list of schools that would be do-able…financially, merit-wise, and major-wise.</p>
<p>Platypus - Do you know your families FASFA EFC? If you qualify for some need, you may qualify for some need based aid at the 100% need met LAC. You also need to look into schools that offer merit. You don’t need your parents to do the research.</p>
<p>Frankly, the first thing I would do is get out of your “I am entitled” head set. You are entitled to…NOTHING. I as a parent am giving my child a gift. She is 18. She has worked hard, and is entitled to my respect. I am grateful for her cooperation, her attitude, her respect for our values, and her contributions to our family. I am confident that if I give her a GIFT of a college contribution, she will respect that by honoring our famly’s money by studying and not wasting our money. As it happens she is going out of state. why? Because she spent every Sunday afternoon with me for the past 2 years exploring options on this board, collecting data, thinking about how she would fit in, etc. When we started, she sounded like …you. She did not have the decision making ability (understandably) to look beyond the quality of the food and the sexiness of the site. She visited sites that I liked that she didn’t find appealing. I visited sites she liked that I didn’t find appealing. We learned together, had a lot of fun, and my husband and I are completely and absolutely confident that her final decision is well reasoned for her. As an aside, when she started it just happened that she fell in love with the school that she has now paid a deposit on. At that time, I did NOT feel comfortable, did NOT want her to go there, and did NOT think it was a good choice. It is her maturity, her gratitude, her honest decision making development, and a thorough understanding of the program she will be attending (which was not her original choice, by the way) that has made me realize this is an awesome choice for her. It is a scary choice for us to send our precious jewel of a kid to a city many times the size of our own, on the other coast, to live with who knows who, without the benefit of our daily guidance and support, and unable to come home at the drop of a hat. guess what. We believe in her, we support her, and she is proven that she is ready. We hope. </p>
<p>It is my sincere hope that you are early enough in the process that you have some time to develop this mature relationship with your parents. You may be RIGHT that OOS and a school out of CA is the best spot for you (not so coincidentially, my DD applied to only Santa Clara University for this exact reason - GREAT school by the way) but the attitude you are displaying is not going to get you the respect that you need to be a partner in the process. Therefore, you are basically forcing your parents to operate from an emotional place, and not allowing them the opportunity to be rational. </p>
<p>In terms of the money, again, you need a different perspective. The only person who knows how much they can afford is your parents, and even they don’t know until they sit down adn figure it out. This board is full of kids who think their parents make “plenty” of money, and are being selfish. Many of these kids are making their judgements based on what they have seen in their parents spending patterns. If your allowance is $20 a week, and I told you that you would need to buy all your own clothes from now on, would you be able to do it? You certainly have plenty of money! You go to Chipoltle way more often than I do! You have seen twice as many movies as I have this year! You go to Starbucks three times a week - why can’t you afford to buy your own clothes! That’s over $1000 dollars a year, and we are feeding, housing, and paying for your other expenses!!! That’s a small and silly example of what your parents are experiencing, except that they are talking about paying the mortgage, the electricity, the groceries… </p>
<p>My advice to you is to STOP your current pattern IMMEDIATELY, ask them to forgive you for your previous attitude, and spend at least a month expressing your gratitude for what they have done so far. Once you have hit the reset button on your relationship (there is one, you know) then ask one of them if they can dedicate time to researching it. Tell them sincerely that you want their life experience, and value it. Introduce them to this board, and look at it together. Help THEM develop knowledge, and allow YOU to build your skills together. </p>
<p>Every parent on this board started by thinking they knew what was best for their child and their personal budget. None of us knew what schools were a good fit, but some of us thought we did. It was only by developing a partnership with our child AND educating ourselves, that we developed a healthy partnership. And yes, I do understand that there may be cultural factors that make this more challenging, but I am convinced that you can reach a healthy compromise if you begin to work on yourself first. And by the way, based on your initial post, I would start by investigating some of the private schools in CA - let your parents see the benefit of schools other than UCLA. They might be comfortable with Pepperdine, University of San Diego, Chapman University… do your research on this board, and find some that are a good match for your statistics and visit with them!</p>
<p>One more thing…if you sit down and talk with them, and what they say they can afford if you go to a school they are comfortable with is less than the tuition at the schools you like, consider going to to schools where your stats are higher than the average student. Our EFC is very high, and we did not expect any financial aide from the schools we liked. However, two of the schools we liked (DePaul and Seattle University) have pretty dramatic merit aid offered if you meet specific admission critereon. Using our daughter as an example, her SATs were 2150, and her GPA 3.3. She received 12K a year from DePaul and 9K a year from Seattle. The gal with whom she toured Seattle received almost all of her tuition paid because she had a 4.0 plus and similar SATs. These monies were allotted without regard for EFC. As a rule, we have observed that most middle class families, especially upper middle class families, have EFCs that are much much higher than they could ever imagine paying. Our family has many friends, and every one was shocked at how much the FAFSA/EFC system believed they could afford for college.</p>
<p>By the way, I was curious about you and looked at your “chance me” post. You are clearly an AMAZING kid who has accomplished a tremendous amount. With the time and dedication that you have shown to the autistic kids and your cello, I KNOW you can work with your parents to find a school that will be a good fit for all of you. </p>
<p>Think of it as learning a difficult piece of music and make those measure by measure incremental changes. And apply to Stanford, look at the Claremont schools… </p>
<p>I know my posts were long, and I hope that they were helpful. Good luck to you in the future!</p>