<p>My dad comes up to me and does the whole "I want you to go to Harvard" crap. Harvard is a place for intellectuals; people who like learning; people who have passions. That's not a place for me. He tells me that he would be ashamed of me if I didn't get into an IVY League school.</p>
<p>So I ask him, "What if I don't apply to those schools?" He responds by saying he'd kick me out of the family. It gets even worse; he says he wouldn't pay tuition for me and force me to take out a student loan (we are upper class, by the way. My family would have no trouble paying for tuition anywhere).</p>
<p>And let's not forget that my brother went to UT-Austin, his safety, because he got rejected from everywhere else. And my dad loves him to death.</p>
<p>I also love his BS arguments comparisons. It's either Harvard or McDonald's. Gotta love Asian parents.</p>
<p>lol i'm asian and my parents used to bug me like that about my grades.. but come high school, like junior year, they just didn't care no more. </p>
<p>i do everything myself... EC's, grades, and everything. and i still get a freeride courtesy of my mom to any university in the states. i'm in canada, btw</p>
<p>Wow, and I thought I had it bad... I probably would have gotten the same thing except I was very dumb as a kid (which set my parents' expectations very low) and slowly got smarter through middle and high school.</p>
<p>I absolutely hate parents like those. Your dad is so effing narrowminded, he thinks your future is secure with a degree from Harvard? I know a guy who graduated from Stanford who is dirt poor right now because he made stupid choices. Harvard doesn't gurantee everything. I feel really sorry for you Arti, I really do because your dad sucks. If you feel Harvard isn't the right place for you, then don't waste money applying. If you do get in, then the college experience would suck because you feel like you don't belong. Your dad can't change how you feel, and he shouldn't force you to go by kicking you out of your family. There my rant is over.</p>
<p>I don't think the dad really means it. Parents tend to exaggerate because they are worried about their kids' futures. I don't anyone would REALLY kick their kid out for not going to IVY League School.</p>
<p>I'm half-Chinese My dad is Chinese, and well he says the same thing to me. He tells me to go to HLS, implying that it's "easy" or at least "okay" to get into. hahaha </p>
<p>For undergrad, he told me "Stanford or Berkeley."</p>
<p>I didn't apply to Stanford. I am now at Berkeley...it's amazing how parents plan their children's lives.</p>
<p>Oh, and another thing that's hilarious. In MIDDLE SCHOOL he told me to study for the SATs. Instead, I ended up reviewing for the SATs the night before I took the exam by studying vocabulary. Ok, so maybe I should have taken his advice, but still...middle school?</p>
<p>my parents gave me the " we want you to go to MIT" speech, but I managed to sit them down (one at a time) and give them the reality check of my statistics against MIT admits'. they gave in(eventurally.. after many conversations and some tears) and let me apply to the school I want for ED.</p>
<p>my dad planned out where i would apply, and i`m only a junior. i began to disagree, but eventually we came up with a compromise.
delicatess - i began studying SAT vocab words in middle school... under parental pressure. kind of surprising now how asian parents get uptight about the SAT when you`re 11.</p>
<p>Kchen: I was lucky. My parents are divorced and I lived with my mom for most of my life...she didn't really care nor obsess over my academics. She's the opposite of my father. I'm surprised they were ever married.</p>
<p>However every time my spoke to my dad--the odd once a week or so--he would ask me about my grades. It's the epitome of the "loving" father-daughter relationship.</p>
<p>my parents are sterotypical asian parents in many sense, but I realized that after I had that LONG talk with each of them, they began to let me "free". </p>
<p>they had put MIT on my application list even before I entered high school (thats gr 8 here) and I had that talk with them early last year. the result was that everything from SAT prep to college reseach was up to me. they set a loose limit on the number of schools I'm allowed to apply and I provided them with name, description, and why I wanted to attend for each school.</p>
<p>I think the main thing is to convince your parents that you are mature enough to be handling yourself, and you are able to make right decisions for yourself. this will take a bit for most traditional asian parents to understand, but it is possible.</p>
<p>I must be the lucky exception, because my Asian parents knew that by the time I was applying to universities, I had no realistic chance at HYPSM for engineering so they didn't push me to apply there... :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Now that I am actually living in the same state as my dad, it's quite annoying. He keeps telling me stories of his friends' children. One scored a 1580 on her SAT and is now at Harvard, for example. The other is supposedly in graduate school at MIT...cheers Dad.</p>
<p>I forgot, he planned my major for me too: biology. He wanted me to become a doctor.</p>
<p>1) That's not me.
2) I hate chemistry.</p>
<p>He told me that once I got "past" chemistry, biology would be fine...</p>
<p>So I told him I wanted to go to law school, and he said, oh that's "okay."</p>
<p>Well, yeah, UCLA engineering is ranked higher than Harvard and Yale's engineering and on-par with Princeton's engineering -- but it's definitely easier to get into... and I was actually kind of referring more to the "M" of when I mentioned "HYPSM".</p>