<p>I didn't know what category to put this in.</p>
<p>I want to go to Penn State but i live in Jersey. My dad doesn't know that i want to go to Penn State but i know that he wants me to go to Rutgers. He does not want me to leave home. We haven't talked about it yet but i'm scared to tell him i want to go to Penn State because i know he's not going to like it. My mom knows i want to go there and she is completely okay with it. In college i want to go into business but my dad want me to go into science.</p>
<p>How can i go where i want and study what i want?
He's very strict and doesn't want me to go into business but i dont understand why not because both my parents are in business. </p>
<p>Please help! I dont know what to say. The longer i wait the harder it will become to talk to him and the chance of him getting his way increases.
I have my mind set on Penn State and Business.
By the way I'm going to be a junior in high school. I know i still have a year to decide but the sooner i get my dad to be okay with my decision the better. </p>
<p>The way to get to do what you want is to pay for it yourself. Except that is not going to happen… odds are you will end up at Rugters. You may be able to negotiate on the major…do you have to apply to different colleges/schools within Rutgers for science vs. business?</p>
<p>Go to him like an adult and tell him why Penn state is a better school for you than Rutgers. Don’t just say you want to go there. Present him with concrete reasons why it will give you more opportunities and a better education than Rutgers. Talk about what you would like to do with your degree and what your job outlook would be like (and try to be as specific as possible, instead of just saying that you “want to go into business”). Talk about what the costs will be and where the money is going to come from. Cover all of your bases and create a well thought-out, logical argument about why Penn state is better for you than Rutgers.</p>
<p>And if he says no, tough luck. Either figure out how to pay for it yourself or go to whatever school your Dad wants you to.</p>
<p>Your dad is a businessman, you say. He’s probably well aware then that the quality of your education is determined by what you do wherever you go rather than what he spends. Rutgers would cost him tens of thousands of dollars less each year. Yes, tens of thousands. And he probably, being a businessman, knows what he can afford to spend.</p>
<p>So schedule a family meeting and sit down with him and your mom and have The Talk about what your family can afford to spend on colleges and why he thinks he can afford Rutgers. Do NOT mention Penn State or any other school. Give him and your mom some time to admire your proactiveness and maturity, and then ask him in X weeks if they’ve had that discussion and what they’ve decided. Get your mom to keep dad on track about this conversation you hope they’re having. Follow her advice on when to bring it up again.</p>
<p>Your dad might say he’ll spend what it would cost him to send you to Rutgers. Ask him for family financial information so you can get a fairly precise number from the net price calculator. Show it to him. Then you’ll have a baseline figure to guide you in finding colleges. You’ll know what you need to do with your GPA and SATs to get enough FA or merit to go to a school that gives you money over and above the number dad gave you.</p>
<p>You need to show some flexibility, too. I know you don’t want to hear this, but flexibility is a skill you have to learn and now is the time to begin learning it. Students who think there’s only one school where they can be happy know a whole lot more about the other 3500 schools in the U.S. than any expert whose been advising students for 40 years. In other words, PSU isn’t the only school where you can be happy and do excellent work.</p>
<p>The only thing you can do is to talk to him honestly. And you also need to understand that PSU may not be in the cards because it will be significantly more expensive than Rutgers.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t care too much about prices and i dont think my parents do either. I will be paying for most of it no matter what college i decide to go to.</p>
<p>Anyone with any brain cell in their head cares about prices. It just shows how immature you are to say that. It doesn’t make a good case for yourself. You want a pony and you want it now.</p>
<p>I’m sorry you don’t have a good enough relationship with your father to even have open conversations, though. I don’t sympathize about the choice of school much because of the price issue, but I don’t think your parent should be picking your major. Advising, guiding yes. Why does he want you to major in science? Why don’t you have a conversation about it where you are open minded. Tell him you would like to talk openly about different majors and the pros and cons. Find out his views and ask him to listen to yours, but in the mode of both of your exploring rather than trying to argue the points yet. Maybe you will find that he has a soul sucking job and hopes you don’t have to face what he had to go through. Or not, but some insight. Maybe he will find from you that certain science majors don’t have all that good job prospects,if you research it right.</p>
<p>@jkeil911 has given some of the best advice on here I have seen so far. If you really want to go there, give him solid reasons and obviously it needs to be enough to make him want to spend the extra 20-30k a year, which can be very significant. Then you need to question yourself, is it really worth it that much to you? And if so why? If you are indeed paying it yourself somehow miraculously, then you need to ask yourself what makes it worth it? There are also thousands of colleges out there, some with good merit options, so you could look into those, so your options are in no way limited to such two extremes</p>
<p>“Anyone with any brain cell in their head cares about prices.”</p>
<p>Not true. Some brain cells are immature.</p>
<p>I know that I’m much more able to contexualize prices now than when I was 16. Back then, I knew what the value of $10 was (10 hours of labor at the family business = 3 movies), but dollar prices in the 4 or 5 figures were hard to comprehend.</p>
<p>To the OP:
Ask your dad why he wants you to go in to science and not in to business. Why don’t you ask him that?</p>
<p>If your parents are not helping, then you need to find some sort of full ride merit scholarship, since you will otherwise not be able to afford to attend college immediately after high school.</p>
<p>I don’t know too many parents who would just say, “Sure, here is my AGI, and balances in all my accounts”. You need cooperation from your parents to run net price calculators, they are going to have to help put the dollars in. Even if they won’t pay, ask them to help you with the net price calculator for Rutgers and maybe a few other schools so you can see what kind of need based aid you would get (if any) and what they would cost. He might agree to help out some with a school HE approves of. And it his money, so you are just going to have to accept the constraint that he can spend it if and how he wants to. </p>
<p>OP, you have no possible way to afford Penn State. You cannot pay for it yourself. You cannot borrow enough money on your own to afford it, and it would be foolish to do so even if you could. Thank your lucky stars if your dad will help some with Rutgers and let you live on campus instead of at home. That sounds like a big win given your situation, and you have to be realistic.</p>
<p>I don’t think the OP absolutely has to go to RU if he/she can think outside the box and actually talk to the dad. Right now, we don’t know what they can afford, what his reasons are for what he wants, and what the OP’s reasons are for what he/she wants.</p>
<p>Without details, I’m not going to recommend a course of action beyond having a candid talk with the dad.</p>
<p>If they are paying for it or a portion of it, wait until you get accepted and THEN tell them. Tell them you’re applying to Penn State only as a backup. Then if you get accepted into both have a talk with then and say that basically it’s your dream school and hopefully they will understand.
If you’re paying for it yourself, it will be quite expensive OOS, however, if you can get any aid, tell them it’s basically YOUR choice anyways.</p>