<p>Perhaps they want you to apply to those reaches because of the financial aid? I’ve run the Princeton aid calculator, and while we don’t qualify for much aid at most schools, we would there, and probably at H as well.</p>
<p>I would say concentrate on the apps you want to submit first, then go ahead and do the ones they want you to submit afterward.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster who said CMU for CS is not really a match for anyone.</p>
<p>“Anyways, thank you for the advice, everyone! icedragon…we are splitting the costs, in a sense. My parents are paying for the equivalent of an in-state education, and I will come up with the difference in tuition should I attend a more expensive university.”</p>
<p>You need to sit your parents down and run their numbers through the EFC calculators at [FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org%5DFinAid”>http://www.finaid.org) and [College</a> Calculators - savings calculators - college costs, loans](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>Calculate Your Cost – BigFuture | College Board) and find out how much more than the cost of an in-state education the various colleges/universities are likely to assume that they can afford. </p>
<p>If the in-state cost is right at their EFC, then things aren’t that bad. You might be able to scrape together enough financial aid and/or merit scholarship money to make the difference between that amount of money and the overall COA of the place you go to. However, if their EFC is more than the in-state cost, it will be a much bigger chunk of the COA at the other colleges/universities, and it will be less likely that you will be able to come up with it all on your own.</p>
<p>You need to get real about the money issue even if they aren’t willing to do so. Their plan could leave you well up past your eyeballs in student debt. For some “fun” reading on that topic, see [Project</a> on Student Debt: Home](<a href=“http://projectonstudentdebt.org/]Project”>http://projectonstudentdebt.org/)</p>
<p>hmm … coming back to the thought your parents want you to go a highly selective school and only want to pay your in-state cost … we do not know anything about yoru family’s financials. If your family’s EFC is near the cost of a state school then financial aid at a HYSP likely will make the cost of attending those school very similar to yoru state school. However if your family’s EFC would be higher then financial aid will not pick up the difference and you will be on the hook … and I agree as other’s do that parents forcing students to more expensive schools and then forcing the student to pay the extra expense is a nutty approach. Your essay is only seen by you and the adcom folks at the school to which you apply … no one else would know if your essay said something like … “My parents are requiring me to apply to school X and will only pay $Y so I will have to take out $100,000 in loans to attend school X … please help me avoid this scenario and do not accept me to school X.”</p>
<p>First of all, I have to say, thank you everyone for giving me such thoughtful advice. I’m on a slight time crunch right now so I can’t reply properly.</p>
<p>To clarify: I imagine my parents are planning on paying for the application fees. I plan on offering to pay for half. I tend to convert dollar values into book values in order to determine scale. Sorry if mentioning that confused anyone!</p>
<p>I’d really like to defend my parents, too; although I’m a little frustrated with them on this issue (and several others), they’re being very reasonable about the whole college process. I’d rather not elaborate too much on our financial situation, but in short: they will be shouldering a significant portion of the cost burden (they really do believe education is their most important gift to me). & we will receive little to no financial aid.</p>
<p>I have discussed the financial factor with them several times, although I probably will continue to do some research on this site and elsewhere concerning student debt.</p>
<p>Also, thank you for the input about my matches. I’m still mildly hopeful about CMU as a match, but perhaps my definition of that is slightly different than everyone else’s…</p>
<p>@csdad, sorry, but where is the My Chances thing? I couldn’t find it.</p>
<p>& also, I’d really hate to BS the apps I don’t want to do (as several of you are suggesting). I feel if I am applying I might as well make an honest effort. Honestly, at this point I’m not sure if I’m pushing back because of the workload or because I don’t want to do the typical thing of applying to an elite college I have little personal knowledge of.</p>
<p>GreekFire,</p>
<p>You wrote:
</p>
<p>I’ll suggest an idea that I don’t think has been mentioned.</p>
<p>Sit down with your parents and tell them all the academic and campus culture reasons why the two match schools have caught your fancy. Make sure that you can tell them all kinds of things (including cost) that attract you to these schools. And tell them that * you * are the one going to college and that while you are flattered that they think you belong at a school like HYPSM, share the Naviance data (or whatever you have) that indicates that students like you from your school don’t actually have that much of a chance getting into the super reaches and that you’d rather concentrate on writing the absolute best application package you can to the schools of your choice.</p>
<p>“I agree with the poster who said CMU for CS is not really a match for anyone.” - I agree too. Also know you will not get merit aid.</p>
<p>^^You can go to Pitt and take classes at CMU!</p>
<p>Sorry - I missed this - you applying this fall for college starting next fall? Since you are not eligible for need based aid, you can make a chart for your parents showing the four-year cost of attendance for each school you (and they) are looking at. If they are willing to pay for you to go to these reach schools, it seems reasonable for you to apply to one or two of them, the ones with the best “fit” for you. Some reach schools require only a bit more than the Common App. (Are your SAT II scores all right? Do your parents understand SAT II scores?)</p>
<p>Make sure your parents understand which schools give no merit aid (or only give merit aid to a handful of students). Sometimes parents have a hunch their smart kid will get a scholarship and don’t catch that some colleges just don’t have “scholarships.”</p>
<p>It’s great that you have access to Naviance. Do you have two safeties? Places you are sure you will be admitted and you would be happy to attend?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you in-state for California?</p>
<p>I am trying to figure out where you are from as I look at your safeties, RPI and RIT.</p>
<p>I love RIT. It is a cool school, especially great for artsy computery kids. My friend’s daughter is there and it is perfect for her. Have you visited? I think Rochester is a nice small city. The weather is cold and snowy. How hard it is for you to fly there and fly home? (It’s a reasonable drive for us from here in Northeastern Ohio.)</p>
<p>My daughter’s friend is at RPI and he loves the academics (and has gotten a wonderful education with great coop/internships) but he has said it is remote, hard to travel to, not a lot to do there, and there are not enough women there. Just one kid, but he’s a typical smart, responsible student. (He and his friends have done periodic “road trip” train trip weekends for off-campus fun.)</p>
<p>While you are working on your list of schools, you might add a column of how you will get from your house to the college for orientation and to start school and to come home for Thanksgiving. Drive? One flight or two? (Expensive flights?) How far from the destination airport to the campus?</p>
<p>I have a slightly different take on the question of how many schools to apply to. </p>
<p>You’re arguing with your parents about the probability of getting into schools, but you should really be thinking about the probability of ATTENDING those schools, which is the probability of getting in multiplied by the probability that it’s your first choice from among the ones you got into. </p>
<p>What you quickly find, is that it becomes very unlikely that you will attend reaches as they move further down your list. In my opinion, you have to have a really good reason to spend time applying to a school where you have less than a 5% chance of actually attending. </p>
<p>If you have match schools that are high on your preference list, it’s especially hard to see how reaches below that are going to exceed a 5% chance of attending. </p>
<p>That should leave you with a manageable number of applications.</p>
<p>You do know that at HYP, if your income is below $180,000 a YEAR, your cost will be about $18,000 a year - well below the cost of attending most instate colleges…<br>
Please make sure you check the financial aid calculators on those websites or tell your parents this info before you decide to know those schools off your list…</p>
<p>anxiousmom,</p>
<p>The OP has already analyzed Naivance data from his school. He knows that the already slim chance at getting into HYPS is even smaller for him than the standard tiny acceptance rates that are made public.</p>
<p>And he knows that to put a quality application to HYPS that will not immediately be ditched into the round file will take a significant chunk of his time and about $70 of his parents’ money. He knows that putting that time into the application is not really going to increase his tiny odds of getting into one of these super reaches AND he knows that he’s more interested in attending schools a bit farther down the pecking order (but not by much). Seems to me the real reason the OP wants to cut the super reaches is that he’d really like to maximize his chances of getting into the schools of his choice, which in some cases are high matches/low reaches to reaches anyway. Seems to me that’s not a bad strategy. But it does force him and his parents to get off the “let’s solve the how to pay for college problem” by “he can go to HYPS” merry-go-round in time to actually figure out how to pay for a school that is appropriate.</p>