Help with my dad

Parents Forum
1

<p>Hi (this is going to be a little long)</p>

<p>I recently told my dad that I wanted to use a portion of my summer earnings to buy a ticket to go to NYC to visit Columbia and Philly to visit Swarthmore. I love both of them equally and wish I could apply to both of them ED, but I really want to get an overnight feel for both colleges to see which one will make the final cut. However, I've discussed Swarthmore with my dad before and he seems hell-bent on not letting me apply there. When I told my dad that I wanted to visit both, he replied with a "I will never support you if you go to Swarthmore." </p>

<p>To him, Swarthmore is a "low-teir, nobody" school, dispite it's academic powerhouse reputation. On the west coast, and in my area, not too many people have heard of Swarthmore, so my dad keeps assuming it (pardon my crudeness) sucks. On top of it, I told him it was a liberal arts college, so he keeps assuming it's an "art college" and since I want "to become a doctor" (something I have no intention on becoming...again one of his dreams) he says I have no place in that school. </p>

<p>I've tried convincing him of how excellent Swarthmore is, but he refuses to listen. I have three older sisters who have graduated college (UCSD 1994, UC Berkeley 2000/Rosalind Franklin Medical School 2004, UC Berkeley 2004/Columbia Mailman School of Public Health 2005/applying to medical school now), and none of them have ever applied to a liberal arts school. </p>

<p>Right now I feel pretty helpless with my prospects of applying to colleges...he (by the way, we are Indian, so he only wants "perfection" from me) really wants me to go to Stanford/Berkeley/Duke/what my mom/dad refer to as "name brand colleges"...and I don't. However, right now it's either what they say and their money, or where I see myself fitting and 160,000 dollars in debt. Is there anyway I can talk to him and let him see my side of the story?</p>

2

<p>Canned, I'm afraid all I have to offer is my support and best wishes, BUT I am sure that many of the parents here (particularly interesteddad) will do everything they can to provide you the "firepower" you will need to discuss Swarthmore with your parents. Is there anybody that your Dad respects who might be able to run interference for you?</p>

3

<p>It can be hard to get parents to change their minds, but there's no reason not to try.</p>

<p>I'd suggest you go to <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.swarthmore.edu&lt;/a>. and do a little research. Print out things that will help you make your case. For example, there are several articles linked to that page right now that might impress your dad. Here's one of them:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/releases/05/pasternack.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/releases/05/pasternack.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Also check the school paper and the alumni magazine. See if you can find data on medical school acceptance rates. Look up Swat faculty in science--google them---and print out their bios. </p>

<p>See if you can find some recent Swat grads who are going to attend med school. Print out info about them.</p>

<p>Search for Swat alums who are on the faculty of leading medical schools. You should be able to find some. Here's info I found on one Swat grad now on the faculty of Dartmouth medical school using google for a few minutes:</p>

<p>Richard W. Wilson, M.D. </p>

<p>Department(s):
Pediatrics</p>

<p>Title(s):
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics</p>

<p>Education:
Harvard Medical School, MD 1977
Swarthmore College, BA 1973</p>

<p>When you have a nice huge file of organized material, leave it for your dad with a note, saying you would very much appreciate it if he would read through the file and discuss it with you afterwards. ORGANIZE it with tabs--medical school admissions, science faculty, etc. He may refuse..but he may actually read it. </p>

<p>This is a sample of the sort of thing I think would impress your dad. UMichigan med takes roughly 40% of its students from UMich undergrad. Here are where the others are from, according to its website.</p>

<p>"Students from other colleges with largest numbers of accepted students Michigan State, 7; Harvard, 6;Stanford, 5; U-C Berkeley andUniversity of Washington, 4 each;Northwestern, Notre Dame, UCLA,Swarthmore, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins, 3 each"</p>

<p>I'm not saying this will work, but I think it's more likely to work that trying to argue with him. Yeah, I know you don't want to go to med school, but save that argument for a different day.</p>

4

<p>This may be a case where the USN&WR rankings could be helpful in persuading your dad that Swarthmore IS prestigious. Swarthmore graduates are highly prized by graduate schools; Swarthmore is known for not only requiring students to write an honors thesis but having faculty from other colleges evaluate the thesis. This sets very high standards, and graduate programs know this.
You would get as great an education at Swarthmore as at Columbia (or Yale, or Harvard, or Princeton, etc...), but in a very different environment. Your undergraduate experience would very likely be far superior to what you would experience at Berkeley since Swarthmore is so much smaller and nurturing that a large university such as Berkeley.
Good luck in your discussions with your dad.</p>

5

<p>I don't really have any advice, but I do have to say that this seems to be really common with Swarthmore in particular. I've seen so many people say this, on several different boards. Maybe they need to do a West Coast PR campaign or something...</p>

6

<p>Well, you haven't seen either Columbia or Swarthmore (so thinking about either for ED is premature), and you haven't gotten in either. Yes, you'd get an extraordinarily wonderful education at Swarthmore as you would at 25-50 other places (I LOVE the LACs), yadda, yadda, yadda,, but unless you are absolutely sure this is where you want to go to school - to apply ED - is this really a fight worth having? You'd have a better case in simply convincing him to allow you to put in an application, one among many, given the difficulties of getting into top colleges these days.</p>

<p>(I doubt you'll get very far citing an ADJUNCT Assistant Professor of Medicine who graduated 32 years ago.) And your dad is right - in the total population, nobody has heard of the place on the west coast (and that pretty much goes for all the east coast LACs).</p>

<p>Trying to sell him on its prestige isn't going to work - in the circles he travels in, he knows (probably correctly) that it doesn't have any. Your best bet might be in getting your sisters to put in a good word for Swarthmore - he obviously does respect their choices. (Do you have any friends who went to LACs whose parents are now supportive, and would talk to him?) Dads do have a way of melting - I'm just suggesting that the straight-up in-your-face approach probably isn't the best one.</p>

7

<p>canned, I can empathize. I'm an American living in Asia. When I tell many of my Asian friends that my son goes to Williams I can see by the look in their eyes that they think it's too bad he doesn't go to a GOOD school. :)</p>

<p>I went to UMich and when my son started the college search process I also knew very little about LACs. Once we started researching, however, we quickly became converts.</p>

<p>Swarthmore (and Williams and Amherst and Pomona and a dozen other LACs) provide wonderful educations and have excellent track records for getting their students into top professional and PhD graduate programs. I guess you already know that and the problem is how to convince your parents. . .</p>

<p>What are they like? If readers and a logical people, then perhaps you could print out some statistics or show them comments in college guide books. I also like the idea of enlisting the help of your sisters. They must have run into LAC graduates in their med schools. </p>

<p>Where does your highschool counselor come into the picture? I know AWS are not household words in California, but if you have a GC who isn't entirely braindead s/he should be able to enlighten your parents.</p>

<p>Maybe you could plan to visit Penn then slide in a visit to Swarthmore on the side? I'm not recommending that you lie to your parents (don't!) but maybe if you have another reason to be in Philadelphia it would be easier to rationalize a visit to Swarthmore.</p>

8

<p>Also research famous alumni of Swath. People who don't know Amherst get more impressed when they learn that Prince Albert is an alumnus. These should be on their website.</p>

9

<p>momrath has a good point -- add Penn to your list, and swing by Swat while your in their backyard.....</p>

10

<p>The most most folks know about Prince Albert is that he is still suffocating. ;)</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Albert_in_a_Can%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Albert_in_a_Can&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

11

<p>Agree with Marite that the USNWR ranking could have pop for someone who is obsessed with "good" schools. Also, you might want to copy out of Princeton Review the write up of Swarthmore for him to read. He may have his eyes opened to how well thought of it is.</p>

<p>Fact is, it is hard to convince a parent who can send you to a UC for $20K that spending $40K for liberal arts school he hasn't heard of is a great idea. I agree that the older sisters can be a GREAT asset (unless they, too, think you are crazy). Maybe they can convince him that the liberal arts school model is a great way to get an education.</p>

<p>Funny--some parents are dead set against an LAC. I have friends who INSISTED that their son go to a LAC. Both came from the LAC environment and can't imagine doing undergrad work at a big university!</p>

<p>The worst thing you could do is to let him force you into a situation that you would hate for 4 years.</p>

12

<p>Thanks everybody for your support. I think I'm going to recruit my sister into this convcincing, since he seems to listen to her a lot (just to let me actually APPLY to this school). And Mini, I've visited Columbia and just glanced at Swarthmore when I was visiting my sister in NYC during Spring Break...but I want to get a better feel and do an overnight. I've read their material (websites/viewbooks/apps) to death, and need to get a final feel. </p>

<p>Also, ellemenope brought up a good point for my family. We have an interesting problem...my dad has been in and out of a job for about three years now, so our household income is pretty low. However, we bought our house when this area was still ranches and a two-lane round...but now it's a pretty wealthy suburban town. Because of that, we've gotten quite a bit of equity on the property. So, we had a mock financial aid package created and it said that I won't be getting any f.aid. So, we don't have money, but we do "have" the money for college....so right now I think it's loans or a UC...which is really a bummer.</p>

13

<p>So...it would seem to me from what you have written above that Swarthmore would be an extraordinarily bad choice, and for one simple reason - they don't (officially) offer any merit aid. Since there are so many other fine liberal arts colleges that do, and if you think you could get into Swarthmore you'd be likely to be in the running for said aid elsewhere, you might do much better looking a bit further afield. </p>

<p>But you do have me confused - your family is poor, but your first post suggested your dad is prepared to pay $160k (it would be closer to $200k by the time you graduate) for the "right" school. Anyhow, there is an awful lot of room between $160k in loans and UC.</p>

14

<p>Swarthmore is one of the top schools around. Period</p>

15

<p>Mini: My dad is full of contradictions (no joke).</p>

16

<p>But, I meant in real terms - is your dad prepared to pay $180k? In other words, is this a real discussion?</p>

<p>How did your sisters pay for med school? These days, med school can run $200k - by the time you get there, add $50k more. Did your sisters finance the whole thing with loans? Did dad pitch in?</p>

<p>In my opinion (and that's all it is), it would be a very bad idea to go heavily into debt for undergrad - to go ANYWHERE - if you knew you were expecting to be taking on that kind of debt for medical school. Especially when there are all kinds of places that either because they are state schools, or because you receive a lot of merit aid, you don't have to. Remember - you don't even know whether you like Swarthmore yet. It's a very fine school. Worth $180k - $200k, either in loans or to your dad, if you know that $250k more in debt (or from dad) is in the offing? I'd think very, very hard before even considering it.</p>

17

<p>Over 60% of the families there deem it worth it year after year.</p>

18

<p>I'll bet you can't find 10 students at Swarthmore (or any other LAC) with $160k in loans, and of those, not more than one taking on debt for medical school.</p>

<p>But if there are 10 (which I seriously doubt), they just haven't done their homework.</p>

19

<p>cannednish:
Mini is right, that if you are contemplating medical school, you need to rein in the cost of undergraduate education. Medical school is very expensive and there are very few opportunities for fellowships.
You need to have a serious talk with your dad about what he thinks he can afford (if he talks about Duke and Stanford, the costs will be similar to Swarthmore). You also need to do a calculation of the estimated financial contribution (EFC). There are online calculators that allow you to do that with a fair degree of accuracy. Bear in mind that some colleges do not count a primary residence as part of the family's assets but many do.
You may find that even with financial aid, the EFC might be higher than what your family could comfortably bear--or you may find that the cost of attending Swarthmore or some other private college could be similar to the cost of attending a UC. Consider also colleges that offer merit aid. WUSTL has a great medical school and offers some merit aid. Case Western is another such. There are more.</p>

20

<p>I completely agree with mini about how unwise it would be to accrue MASSIVE undergrad debt (on the order of $100,000 to $150,000).</p>

<p>If your father has been in and out of a job for three years now (you did not mention if your mother works, but based on your posts I will assume she is not a major breadwinner in your family), then HOW are you and your family going to pay for college? You mentoned that your parents' home is worth a lot of money, but so what? Do you expect them to sell the home and move to Iowa? If he has been in and out of work, a home equity loan doesn't sound wise. It may be true that you would love to attend Swarthmore. I actually live about 15 miles from Swarthmore, and have visited the campus and know that my daughter would LOVE to attend there. However, I also know that we would receive little or no FA. Since my daughter intends to go to medical school, she is looking for schools that are a rung down in prestige where she can get substantial merit aid, because I can afford to help her with undergrad at a private school or med school, but not both (I have finite resources and multiple kids). She is (I think wisely) foregoing her first choice undergrad school to finish med school with minimal debt.</p>