<p>I am going to be a high school senior, and I have narrowed down my college choices to Wayne State University (Detroit) and Northwestern University (Evanston, near Chicago). I live near Detroit, and I want to become a physical therapist. Wayne State has a good program, while Northwestern has one of the nation's top programs. I have excellent grades, various extracurriculars, and a high ACT score, so I feel like i have a good chance of getting accepted in Northwestern. Money is not an issue. At Wayne State I will recieve merit scholarships while at Northwestern I will recieve financial aid and need-based scholarships. I can attend either without debt and minimal out-of-pocket costs. Northwestern is my dream school; I love the campus, the city, the atmosphere, and the college programs it offers.</p>
<p>My problem is that my mom does not want me to move out. She is bent on sending me to Wayne State, her alma matter. I have tried discussing Northwestern with her calmy, logically, and respectfully, but she always becomes angry and defensive. She does not want her "baby" leaving her. It's not like Northwestern is across the country (it's only a 4-5 hour train ride away from our home). Her mind is closed and she will not listen to what I have to say! I am very mature and responsible- I have proven this to my parents all throughout all of high school. I have consistently taken challenging courses, recieved good grades, played a sport, volunteered, participated in clubs, and worked, while still managing my time so that I was always able to clean the house and spend time with my family. I have a good relationship with my parents and I am a good daughter and person. My dad is more open to the idea, but he isn't fully convinced. I have the opportunity to attend the best school, so why should I settle for anything less? </p>
<p>I want to apply early decision to Northwestern this August/September, but I will not be able to if my mom does not support me. What should I do? Am I wrong in this situation? Should I just listen to my mom and attend Wayne State University instead of my dream school (which is quite an attainable dream)? Any advice would be really appreciated! Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Neither school has direct admission into the Physical Therapy program. Hopefully your parents will allow you to apply for both. If you don’t get to attend your dream school as an undergrad, there is no reason not to apply for the DPT program.</p>
<p>I recommend that you don’t them explicitly that if you had the choice to go to Northwestern over Wayne State that would be your personal choice. Instead, I’d slowly introduce them to the university. First ask them to read about it with you. Then ask to visit. Then to apply. And finally, if you are accepted, explain how much it would mean to you if you were allowed to go. Be respectful of their opinions and hear them out too, even if you don’t agree. Weigh the pros and cons aloud to them and then tell them all the reasons why you might choose Northwestern. Hope everything works out!</p>
<p>From now and the time you apply, be the model daughter and student you describe above.
Continue to try to have calm, rational conversations with your mother about your future and that you hope to have her emotional support if you get accepted to Northwestern.
Tell her you know that she loves you and that’s what gives you the confidence to embrace new situations and planning your life in college.
Is your mother nervous about meeting new people and change?
Is she always this dramatic when you aren’t on board with her agenda?
Perhaps she doesn’t want you to have a better college experience than she did and that you will look down on her?
Maybe it comes to a point when you tell your mother that despite her opinion of NU, that is the school you will attend because it is the college experience you want.
You can’t please your parents all the time,especially when they are being irrational, hopefully with the support of your dad, your mother will consent to Northwestern.
Good luck.</p>
<p>Would you be living at home if you went to Wayne State? Are you members of a cultural group in which children don’t typically leave home for college? Are you sure there would be no significant financial difference between the two?</p>
<p>You might want to see if you could get another trusted adult involved in the discussion, like perhaps your guidance counselor.</p>
<p>It seems that a large part of your mother’s motivation for having you attend Wayne State is for you to live at home. Is her reason culturally based, or financial?</p>
<p>You say you would receive merit scholarships at Wayne State, and financial aid at Northwestern. </p>
<p>While Northwestern is a wonderful school, it is also a very expensive school. Your financial aid from NU is unlikely to be a full, free-ride scholarship. Likely the school would be looking for some parental contribution, and also for you to take on some student loans. If your parents cannot come up with the amount the school expects them to come up with for the parental contribution? More loans. In addition, going away to school has a lot more expenses than living on campus–transportation, laundry, going out on campus, etc. Your mother may be worried about these money aspects and not feel comfortable letting you in on the family’s financial status.</p>
<p>I assume you have a few more schools on your list than just those two… two is not enough colleges to apply to. I personally think it is not a good idea for you OR your mom to get too attached to one school at this point. Make a list of a couple of reaches (NW is probably on that list), a few matches, and a couple of safeties. Apply to all of them and compare your financial aid results. Go to a few accepted student days if you can (take your mom to the NW one, it might help convince her), then decide. This is a much better plan than making up your mind where you most want to go in spring of your junior year and arguing with your parents about if for months. Give yourself several choices if you can for next spring, then go for final visits. </p>
<p>You would be surprised how a school doesn’t look as great sometimes at accepted student visits (trust me, my D just went through this – thought she knew the ranking of her top 3 schools, and ended up picking the distant third after accepted student visits). Even though she visited before and researched a lot.</p>
<p>Northwestern is not an easy admit, you might not even get in. Even with the net price calculator results in hand (I assume you have run them), that does not guarantee that your financial aid will match what they show now. Sometimes there are questions they don’t ask or can’t get at in the calculators so you can get an unpleasant surprise when the aid comes. And I do assume that you would have loans if you went to Northwestern.</p>
If you have the qualifications to be admitted to Northwestern, it would seriously be difficult to be turned down by Wayne State.</p>
<p>I know the OP is confident that financing won’t be a problem, but maybe if you wait until you have both acceptances and offers, it will be easier to sit down with your parents and show them the choices.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone who has replied so far. To answer some questions, let me start off by saying that no, my family is not culturally against me going away. My mother’s concerns are also not financially based. My parents are very honest with us about our financial situation. I do understand that I may have to take out some loans (minimum $5,000 a year to maximum $10,000 a year) if I attend Northwestern, but these loans would be small (in comparison to Northwestern costs), and my parents are aware that I will be able to pay them back in the future (physical therapy is currently a rapidly growing field). Even if I do attend Wayne State, I am only guaranteed a half-tuition scholarship, meaning I still might have to take loans out. My mom is just nervous about me leaving her and my general well-being. She is really a wonderful person, but extremely paranoid (too many murder mysteries :D) and very stubborn when it comes to certain things. I am the oldest child, so I suspect my siblings might have an easier time discussing college in the future.
I know I can get my dad on my side, but I am a little worried that if my dad supports my choice and my mom takes an opposite stand, I might rip them apart. Is there anything I can do to convince my mom without pitting my parents against each other?</p>
<p>I’m sure you are a strong student, but please don’t consider Northwestern “in the bag” for you – it’s in the bag for no one, and you’ve got plenty of Michiganders competing with you for NU spots.</p>
<p>Moreover, I’m a bit confused why you are fixating for NU for physical therapy. There are no physical therapy offerings at the undergrad level. The physical therapy program resides within the school of medicine at the graduate level.</p>
<p>Is it possible you are confusing Weinberg (the name of NU’s college of arts and sciences, where undergrads go) with Feinberg (the name of NU’s medical school)? </p>
<p>Honestly, for someone whose explicit goal is to become a physical therapist, I can’t say NU is particularly a good choice. I don’t know much about the field, but I’d have to imagine there are plenty of less expensive choices that offer more direct exposure to physical therapy at the undergrad level as prep for a graduate degree in the field.</p>
<p>I agree that you need to apply to more schools. Admissions can be very fluky, and so can FA. Try not to think of one place as the “dream” school and another as the fallback. Try to give yourself a reasonable range of choices.</p>
<p>In addition, I urge you to make certain that the schools you apply to do not appeal ONLY because of their physical therapy program. Kids often change their majors after exposure to the course of study, even kids who are absolutely certain going in.</p>
<p>I would get your mom engaged and ask if she would go on some college visit trips with you this summer - I’d hit Central and Grand Valley and Northwestern. It would be “girls trip on the road” and having her sit through info sessions and tours and see how colleges interact with students from a college perspective might help her feel more comfortable to have you 2-5 hours away. Plus, you need to look at the other two colleges in Michigan if you haven’t (in addition to Wayne and Northwestern. At the very minimum you should probably apply to Central and/or GVSU in addition to Wayne and Northwestern. No telling how the costs will pan out and two more apps isn’t going to kill you. Good luck!</p>
<p>I am pretty sure University of Michigan does not have an undergraduate major in Physical Therapy. And as Pizzagirl already stated, Northwestern does not have one either. </p>
<p>If you are planning to get a bachelors degree in Physical Therapy and work with that degree only, I recommend getting the degree from a school where you would not incur much debt. This is not only because of the earnings potential with the bachelors degree only, but also because you may later decide to go for the doctoral program in PT and that could be costly. Also, even though it is true that Physical Therapy is a rapidly growing field, make sure you understand what you will be able to do career-wise with a bachelors degree in PT.</p>
<p>If you are aiming for eventually going for a graduate degree in Physical Therapy, these programs are often expensive and intensely competitive. From what I know about graduate programs in Physical Therapy, most people entering doctoral programs in PT do not have undergraduate degrees in Physical Therapy, but come from a variety of undergraduate majors. However, there are specific prerequisites for various undergraduate science courses and a high undergraduate gpa is very important.</p>
<p>Northwestern has a program for undergraduates Northwestern University Pre-Physical Therapy Scholars Program but it would be the OP’s “reach school” which is fine but Central, Wayne and Grand Valley are her best in-state bets and they have undergraduate physical therapy programs.</p>
<p>The program Momofthreeboys references is a program whereby NU <em>juniors</em> may be accepted into the medical school / physical therapy program at that point so they start up into the med school / PT program right after they finish their senior year. It’s not a program like a 6-year or 7-year med program, in which students are accepted as a high school student and know from the day that they get on campus that they will have a place in the program in a few years.</p>
<p>In other words, it’s a long shot (for anyone) to get into Northwestern, and it’s a long shot that you will qualify for the program at the end of junior year. This is really not where you want to hang your hat. I can’t speak to Michigan’s programs, but if they do have kinesiology – that seems like a no-brainer choice on many dimensions – closer to what you want to do, closer physically, and less expensive.</p>