<p>We went through this with my elderly aunt (now deceased) and my daughter. Aunt Peggy was fixated on Yale, since she had lived in CT. She also had Alzheimer’s and brought up Yale about EVERY hour! My daughter would have rather waited tables than gone to Yale and somehow was able to just grit her teeth. Aunt Peggy meant well, but it really does get annoying, so I feel for you! (My daughter went to Rice- a perfect fit.)</p>
<p>Grand parents can be a bit clueless. My parents were telling everyone my nephew got into Harvard because he had an interview there. This was in Feb, months before decisions came out. Now my nephew is smart and got into quite a few good schools with great scholarships, and will be happily attending a wonderful school in the fall. He did extremely well, I, and his parents are very proud of him. Now my parents are thrilled too. It just was a bit of a shock to them that the interview did not mean he got into Harvard.</p>
<p>Ah, well, I haven’t mentioned the aunt (Dad’s sister) with Alzheimer’s, who mentions Swarthmore every half hour or so to both kids. They (and I) are actually very patient with her, she has an excuse for asking repeatedly.</p>
<p>Can you try the old evasive action, mixed in with some smile-and-nod?</p>
<p>“She’s going to apply several places, and then we’ll just see where she gets in…”
“We’ll sure take a look at Stanford, and put it on our list…”
“We’re keeping our options open. We appreciate your ideas…”</p>
<p>I know it is hard not to let those closest to us sometimes get under our skin. But just try to let their comments roll off. Smile, hug, nod, change subject. Then apply where your daughter wants to apply.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think it’s a matter of focusing on trying to get in to HYPS, but just applying. If she gets in she gets in, if she doesn’t she doesn’t.</p>
<p>Hard to be evasive when Dad pulls me aside into his den for a “talk” about this whenever we are visiting. And turns it into a lecture on how I am selling her short, etc. They bring it up on every phone call now, too. Wildly frustrating… this is a kid with a very high IQ, but also a non-verbal learning disability. Parents are perfectly aware of the disability, too. They just can’t leave it alone, even when I try to change the subject. </p>
<p>I was there with D2 a couple of weeks ago, and we had visited a top-25 LAC in their area that D really liked. My dad immediately told me that it was where all the drunks he knew had gone in his time, and then launched into his HPYS spiel again. Fortunately he did not belittle it in front of D. This is not a school with a big party reputation today (something I am watching for, along with many other criteria) – it was all male 65 years ago when his friends went, and had a big frat scene that is no longer prominent on campus. Sigh.</p>
<p>I think I’d take an extreme path to deal with these extreme folks–just tell 'em they’ve succeeded in convincing her and she’s applying to every school they’ve mentioned, let her apply where she wants, then when April 1 comes around, tell 'em HYPS all rejected her. A very white lie, and easier on everyone.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>I agree…a little white lie that she’s applying to them all. Then, you can just say that she didn’t get accepted to whichever schools that she didn’t want to go to.</p>
<p>My now deceased dad could not understand why my kids took Spanish instead of French…he harped about it all the time. He felt that French or German were the languages that academic-minded students took. I know he was operating on old info where future STEM PhD students usually had to know one of those languages.</p>
<p>Didn’t I read on another thread recently that goat herding and manhole cover collecting are the new hooks for Harvard? There is still time to get her started!</p>
<p>(referring to the Are colleges racist? thread)</p>
<p>Quite seriously…</p>
<p>Just tell your folks that you don’t think she can get in and if she does, you don’t think you can afford it. If they disagree,tell them if they will pay the application fee, you’ll make her apply to ONE school they choose. If she doesn’t get in…no problem. If she does and you aren’t happy with fin aid…then you can tell them how much they have to pay to make their dreams come true.</p>
<p>I really don’t think it’s that big a deal to ask your kid to fill out one app to make grandpa and grandma happy.</p>
<p>I think the worm was still in middle school when he had “the talk” with his beloved grandmother. She told him to work hard, and if he got into Harvard, MIT, etc, she’d find a way to help pay for it. Sadly, she died too young, a few years later, and her husband (my dad) had a stroke at her bedside, and died within the year. I wasn’t privy to this conversation, but it was motivating.</p>
<p>Sadly, my parents were not alive to know that the worm would gain admittance to several reach schools–Caltech, CMU, Princeton, Yale, Mit, et al. How thrilled they would have been. My sibling and I went to state school, but the grandparents left the funds to make a private college doable.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that the grandparents would have been proud no matter where the worm matriculated. </p>
<p>Inparent, I don’t doubt that your DS is seen as special to your parents, and they think he would be an asset to any college. It may be annoying, but I suspect they mean well. They just don’t comprehend how competitive the current situation is, and just how expensive private colleges are at this time.</p>
<p>With D1, I had all kinds of well-meaning people “sure” that she would get “full-rides” to ANY school she wanted to attend, including HYP, etc. Even people our age who hadn’t been through the whole college hoopla didn’t understand. Your parents are understandably proud of their granddaughter. Unless they are contributing $$, in the end it really is her life/her decision. (You might have some stats in your back pocket for the next time you get “called in” to the study to explain to your father)…Acceptance rates, some stats from some of the people who did not get into Harvard or Yale this year (look back here on CC), as well as the COA of the schools they seem to be pushing. In the end, it may become the “smile and nod” strategy that will be the best one.</p>
<p>For the last year, even before D got her grad school applications submitted, every single time I talked to my mother, it was “Has astrogirl decided where she’s going to go to grad school?” I must have explained 50 times that she had to apply, then find out if she was accepted, etc. I finally got used to saying the same thing over and over. By February, I told her that D wouldn’t decide/know where she was going until May. That exact same conversation literally happened every time I talked to her between Feb and May…arg.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, now that astrogirl has things all lined up for the fall, now grandma has her sights on astrosister. “What is she going to do when she graduates?” She’s starting her junior year this fall. It’s going to be a long 2 years, I think. Good luck dealing with the grandparents!</p>
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<p>Amen. </p>
<p>But if the kid has no desire to attend HYPS then she should not bother to apply. Just tell the grandparents she prefers XYZ (LAC) more and that it is an even more exclusive school than HYP.</p>
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<p>Not “some” of it – ALL of it. I’ve been there, and it’s all about status. Grandparents live vicariously through the achievements of their grandkids, and they want to keep up with their friends or, preferably, exceed them. </p>
<p>My D is the oldest grandchild, and my parents began talking about college when she was a freshman. I regret to say that I felt like I “owed” them permission to talk to us, and to her, about it to their heart’s content, which became almost every conversation for the last two years of HS. That was a big mistake. </p>
<p>Perhaps as a result of the grilling that D took, my SIL handled it much better with her son, who’s 3 years younger. The first time my parents asked about his college plans, she said pleasantly but firmly, “We’re not talking about college until senior year.” No explanations, no apologies, but her manner made it very clear that the subject was closed. The GPs left him alone after that, while I silently cheered.</p>
<p>Heres another way to look at it…they know your daughter is so special that she could very well be a candidate for matriculation. I would ask your daughter to apply to a couple of these schools. She has nothing to lose, and in the event that she gets accepted, she could decide what she would like to do.</p>
<p>Op, your parents attitude is very sweet and typical of what most grandparents should be like. My dad has many grandchildren. Several of them never attended college and those who had attended, went to divisions of their state schools. My dads first grandchildren to attend known name schools were my kids…he never made any distiction between my kids colleges and the others…now thats a grandpa. </p>
<p>It would have been nice if he doled out a little cash but he never did. He also had no clue what it cost to send them to their schools…if they are not offering to help pay than they don’t need to know the price.</p>
<p>I had somewhat of an interesting reverse situation. My father had to leave West Point at 19 because he got polio. He never got over it. He graduated from Penn, but that was the hometown school and despite a number of impressive graduate degrees from other places, he lived his life filled with disappointment about not finishing West Point and some resentment towards Penn. It wasn’t until my son chose Penn that my father began to fully appreciate it and respect it. The Christmas before my son matriculated my father presented my son with his Penn necktie! It was pretty special. My father also appreciates the strengths of the various state schools, so we never had any pressure on that front. Some get it and some don’t. My mother (parents are divorced) on the other hand, (also a Penn grad and also unable to follow through with her chosen career path due to polio) would have thought any school with pretty school colors would be fine.</p>
<p>MOWC: I had no idea both your parents had polio. One of the huge successes of medicine in the 20th century is the eradication of that horrible disease.</p>
<p>That is incredible about having 2 parents with polio</p>
<p>While your parents may mean well, OP, your dau’s college decisionis HERS, not your parents. I would bot encourage your dau to waste precious tome and energy applying to any schools she does not want to attend just to assuage her. Its a lose-lose. If she doesnt get in, they may say something unkind (maybe) and if she does get in but doent attned, well heaven help her. If she wants to go to an Ivy/top 20, then encourage her to apply. If she doesn’t then finding that polite way to tell your parents “this is not your decision” is the thing to do. YOu can delicately tell them you are happy o keep them posted of her college appliation process (in 2 years whenthe time comes) but you are not looking for input/feedback, and if they are finding the need to comment on her choices, you won’t dicuss it with them. Then its their choice to listen and hush, or not be included in the conversation.</p>
<p>Eventually , I think Momma J has the right idea. For now, its too bad that your D is only a JR, so you are likely to hear more from them about colleges in the next 2 years. Maybe you can just repeat this mantra over and over again when they try to bring up college- “Its her choice where to apply and go to college” . And since your parents wont be helping to pay the costs, you should also tell them, over and over again if need be- that “their recommendations of expensive, hard to get into colleges are not helpful or welcome”. I would just try to cut off any discussion of colleges with them the minute they bring it up. Just like an errant dog, they may have to be told “NO” repeatedly, to really get the message.</p>
<p>MOWC, I hope your parents are doing well. Its lovely that your son’s choice of UPenn brought some closure to your dad.</p>