<p>I lot of this depends on the child, and also on the specific choices.</p>
<p>With my first child, the final choice came down to two colleges, and my wife and I had a clear preference, based on emotion, logic (decent, but not overwhelming), and money (but not a huge difference). I limited myself to rational discussion of the pros and cons, making my feelings clear, but leaving the final decision to my child. I felt gratified and affirmed when the “right” choice was made. Only recently – four years later – did I learn that my wife was far more directive than I, and had said, essentially, “You have to choose this one.” But it was really OK. The child liked both colleges plenty, and understood why we preferred one over the other. She has been happy with her choice. She is adept at using guilt in parental management, and I have never even gotten a hint that we should feel bad about having steered her to the college she attends. I would also say that with this child, we had very little involvement in anything up to that point. She handled all of the decisions about where to apply and how herself, merely telling us what she was doing and letting us say “Sounds good.” (And of course getting the credit card to pay application fees.)</p>
<p>With our second child, the final choice was much more difficult, both for us and for him. Both parents and child had a strong emotional preference for one college, but the other cost much less. There were some logical reasons to prefer the first, but nothing that justified the cost differential. Our parental dilemma was whether to tell him he had to choose the less expensive college. He would have understood if we had, and may even have been expecting us to do that, but in the end we decided not to. Things would have been different, of course, if real hardship had been involved. (Although when I look at my retirement savings, I’m not so sure we didn’t merely defer real hardship.)</p>
<p>Other cases: A few years ago, one of our friends got bizarrely fixated on his daughter’s choice between Tweedledum College and Tweedledee College (longstanding traditional rivals of absolutely equal quality). She wanted 'Dum, for perfectly good, but trivial reasons. (The town was cuter. Someone who had a job she would like to have some day had gone there.) Her father had fallen in love with 'Dee’s marketing materials, and sincerely believed that 'Dee was “better” in significant respects. He made her go back to 'Dee twice to see whether she wouldn’t recognize its superiority. Finally a few of his adult friends intervened and told him that no one except he believed there was a meaningful educational difference between 'Dum and 'Dee, and he really ought to back off (which he did).</p>
<p>Back in the day, my parents essentially gave me a list of seven colleges to which I was allowed to apply. (I probably could have gotten it expanded by a few if I had pushed back.) It was a little disconcerting, but not so serious, since there was really only one college I was interested in that they were excluding. When it came to the final choice, I chose the “wrong” one from their standpoint. I knew what they thought, but it didn’t occur to me to care that much, since they were old and out-of-touch, etc. It was another Tweedledum-Tweedledee situation, and I had pretty airtight reasons for my preference. I was right. I did the same thing to them when grad school rolled around, although this time I didn’t let them limit where I applied. My final choice was so bizarre to them that, had it ever occurred to them that I might really go that way they might have tried to forbid it. They were beside themselves, and tried for months to get me to change the decision. I was right then, too, which they acknowledged a few years later.</p>