Be honest and straightforward; don’t get confrontational or have a tone, even if the conversation strays a little bit into bickering or negative territory.
Ok. I just don’t know if I should keep talking about it right now because I still do have some time to decide, I just want to actually start thinking about where I will go.
These parents remind me a bit of my sister and b-in-law…who i love dearly…but who also live in the suburbs of a large metro area. in their case, they are very frightened by the idea of living in a big city. Their experiences are based on short vacation trips but - truthfully - mostly news accounts and the opinions of their suburban neighbors. i like the idea of bringing your dad on a trip with you…BU and NYU are particularly good tours…and he would get a look at the wide variety of kids/parents who are eager to attend these schools.
I can totally relate to the OP in that I was limited to where I could apply. I wasn’t allowed to apply anywhere outside of a 5 hour radius, which meant I had to kiss schools like NYU, Grinnell, and Brandeis goodbye. It’s devastating at first, but you soon realize that you don’t always need to be far away from home or be in an urban metropolis to succeed. You find quality schools that meet everyone’s criteria. I would never have applied to Case Western if it weren’t for the limitations my parents put on me, and now I’m hooked on the place. Instead of viewing your parents limitations as a hindrance, view it as a gift. They’re leading you to where you need to be.
A 33 ACT means that you are in the top 1% of all students taking the test. A 33 can get you in anywhere you like.
Way over 75% of BU freshman have scores lower than you.
Over 75% of Barnard and NYU freshman have scores lower than you.
75% of Northeastern and Reed freshman have scores equal to or lower than you.
Over 25% of Harvard freshman have scores lower than you.
What schools are they interested in you visiting and considering?
No!! Stop until you have a plan on how to approach this. My guess, and mind you it is only a guess, is that you’re parents aren’t really prepared yet to have this set of conversations and that you are getting off-the-cuff answers that are locking you in to a difficult place. Like you and me, once things are said they are hard to take back. You’ve already had a bunch of schools and a category taken off the table, perhaps permanently, perhaps going from no school in NYC (dad) to no school in a major city (mom). Why make things worse by plunging blindly ahead?
While this advice is well-meant, IMHO its the worst thing to do here. If I’m right above, do this and you lock yourself into a set of poorly thought-out schools, a hole you’’ have dug for yourself. They have no firm idea of college costs or what they can contribute? Mom hasn’t heard of a school so its no good? This is not the team you want picking colleges for you, not at this point!
As they said in the movies, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” You need 2 things. A way to map out the way to make decisions that everyone can agree on, and a way to sell that approach. I suggest 2 books that can help you here. The first is "Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World " by Stuart Diamond. It isn’t magic, just say these 5 things and people are putty in your hands, but a well-presented way to negotiate fairly but firmly. Incidentally the suggestion about mapping out how to decide is one of the ideas he presents; when dealing with a more powerful party they can hardly object to choices made using their own rules about making those choices. If you want to see a summary he presented in a talk at Google watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOZo6Lx70ok (not a substitute for the whole book, though)
So what is that way to make decisions? You’ll find it in any good book about college admissions. Its understanding different types of colleges and dimensions on which colleges differ, how to select colleges that are a fit, understanding college finances, what to look for on college visits, ordinary stuff like that. Read one of these books and you’ll learn something, they’ll learn something. And you turn what has been so far an adversarial process into one you and your parents both believe in – find the best set of colleges for you. One book I recommend is “Admission Matters” (http://www.admissionmatters.com/); there are many others.
Understand, too, the differences between your preferences and goals. Your goals are International Relations or business. People get great jobs in these fields from all sorts of schools, from Middlebury in rural Vermont to Columbia in the heart of NYC. You may want to live in a big city in college for the fun of it, but you’ll have the rest of your life to do it should there be nothing that changes your parents’ mind on where you go. Far more important to your goals is attending a school with a good study-abroad program (for IR) and devoted alums to help with internships. Don’t mix the two! Being flexible regarding your preferences vis-a-vis your parents preferences may gain you a lot in terms of achieving your goals.
I don’t even think that Reed is in a very “urban” location. I understand that its neighborhood is residential, with a more suburban feeling to it. Unfortunately, the OP is going to have to work with her parents about this, and find out what colleges would be acceptable. New York is safer now than it has ever been since people began recording crime statistics. I went to Barnard in the 1970s, when crime was at its near-peak, and I firmly believed that the immediate neighborhood was one of the safest places in the world: brightly lit, heavily patrolled, with people milling about at all hours. Your parents won’t choose to hear that if they are determined not to, however.
OP,you need to start with a talk about finances. If your parents are high income, you won’t qualify for much need based financial aid-- and schools like Barnard & Reed offer need-based aid only. Other schools like BU and NYU do not promised to meet full need, and are not known to be particularly generous with merit aid either. I think your 33 ACT is fine for just about anywhere, but your GPA may not be competitive for the top merit awards.
I think you need to look at the COA for your in-state public, and then seriously look at colleges that are likely to offer you enough merit aid to make the overall cost competitive with the public schools. That’s because your parents have a much better reason to say no to you in the end than the ones they have given you: if they don’t want to pay $60K a year for you to to attend school, you aren’t going to go an no amount of persuasion will help you.
So start focusing on finances.
If this wasn’t college and if instead your parents were willing to buy a car for you – you wouldn’t start by deciding that you’d love to have a Tesla – you would find out what they were willing to pay, and then start looking within that budget.
33 ACT? What kind of GPA do you have? High enough, and you may be able to get a full ride somewhere…
In any case, it appears that you need to find out why your father does not want you to go to those schools. Is it cost limitations or some other reason?
Have you considered any LACs in suburban/rural locations a little closer to home?
Possibilities:
Carleton, Grinnell, Kenyon, Oberlin, Earlham.
Earlham is in a fairly rural area and is less selective than Reed or Barnard.
Something to consider: just because you want to live (or feel you need to live) in a certain place after college graduation doesn’t mean you have to attend college there. Check out the job placement statistics of the colleges you are looking at. Recruiters travel quite a distance to find graduates who are top in their field. It’s entirely possible, for example, to go to school in Tallahassee and end up hired by an employer in Atlanta, New York, or DC.
Further, there are some quite good schools that are only a train ride away from New York but which are in small enough towns to appease your parents. Cast your net a bit wider, and come up with a compromise. If you dig in your heels and just want what you want, it’s not going to convince your parents to budge even a little.
What would happen if you dragged out a Fiske guide and asked them to make a list of, say, thirty schools, and you did the same? There’s bound to be some overlap somewhere. At the least, you’d both have a better idea of what the other finds desirable, and without arguing.
Here is what I would suggest:
List a few schools closer to home and see what they say. There are a few on this thread. Ask them to sit down with you to run the net price calculators for those. Say… Earlham, UIUC, Northwestern, Macalester, U of Minnesota - TC (has pretty low OOS costs compared to most publics, and is in a city, but maybe they won’t find the Twin Cities scary. 
). See what they say about the numbers that come up for each school. I’d print/save the results of each one just so you have them to refer back to later.
This is a way to get to a more concrete discussion about this. At one point in this thread you said they won’t help AT ALL. If they are relatively high income, then you need to either (1) get a large automatic scholarship (places like U of Alabama are worth looking at, and retesting to get your scores as high as possible – ACT, and take the SAT), or (2) live at home and commute, possibly starting with a community college for two years. That is just the reality of if they won’t pay. Now… maybe they will pay for a state school, since they went to one. Get the cost of UIUC as part of your sit down with them. Then you can compare that to things like the cost of U MN - TC and U of Alabama with scholarships.
As others have said, your parents are under no obligation to pay for your college, and getting any help would be a good thing. Especially if they went to state schools, they may see no reason to do otherwise. And I can respect that perspective.
Here is a list of threads on the topic “my parents won’t let me…” Many address the issue you are struggling with. Might be helpful to read those threads for guidance. http://www.collegeconfidential.com/search-results/?cx=013579521852154800353%3Avvp1k6kluvq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=my+parents+wont+let+me
I like mikemac’s approach. And suggest if his approach doesn’t work, you go into Worst Case Scenario mode. That means assuming your parents will not be contributing to your college costs at all. I would pick schools that offer automatic full ride scholarships, and throw in a few schools where your stats would suggest you are in the top10% and would be competitive for their top merit scholarship competitions.
You can only borrow $5500 as a freshman, and then add in any money you’ved saved through working, to figure out if a school’s COA after merit scholarship is actually affordable for you.
I would pick one or two favorite city schools, but have the rest be a train ride outside of cities, and even a couple that aren’t near a city at all. And I imagine your folks are going to freak out about you going a far distance away, so I would pick a number of in state choices, and maybe keep most of the choices an easy car ride from home.
Until you have been a parent, you can’t imagine the panic of realizing it is time for your child to graduate high school and leave home. And if you are the first child (or worse if you are an only child) the panic is magnified. So this parent panic thing is probably not going away anytime soon, and you will have to figure out ways to gently pull them along this journey.
Check with your GC and ask for their recommendations for good safety schools for you to apply to. Do your research on your own. But go bigger than “in a big city” or “has my major”. Think of yourself on a college campus and what factors are important to you.
Best of luck to you!
Did your parents setup any type of College fund for you? Are there other siblings destine for college in the next 2 to 3 years? Not because your parents are high income means they can afford the schools on your list. Maybe you should do as they did. Attend a State University and then apply to Graduate Schools in one of these Urban Areas. Graduate degrees may carry a lot more weight than your undergraduate degree as far as getting the “right” job or impact on your career. Think strategically about this approach…maybe doing an MBA at NYU Stern or Columbia University after 4-years of Undergrad. Maybe some form of internship during the Summer in New York will help you land that perfect Job in NYC.
Maybe your parents have some reservations pertaining to your maturity level at this stage of your life and believe you will not be able to navigate the rough and tumble big city environment.
If HS GPA is at least 3.50 to go with the 33 ACT, then the OP will get a full ride to Howard if s/he applies early enough, which is in a big city (Washington, DC) and offers political science and international business majors. But a 3.30 college GPA is needed to renew the scholarship. http://www.howard.edu/financialaid/grants_scholarships.htm#Freshman
33 is an excellent score - top 1% in the country.
You will not be “alone in the city”. You’ll be on a campus, in a dorm with security, with RA’s. You’ll be surrounded by people there to help you. It’s actually much easier to transition to autonomous living in this way.
Barnard, in particular, is excellent for someone who’s slightly sheltered - nice neighborhood, good security, women’s college… Go with your father to visit. If he doesn’t like it, take it off the list.
Include Fordham on your visit list, as well as Vassar (not in the big city, but 1h30 from it by train).
Perhaps your parents aren’t ready to think about you going away to college…
I like the approach where you give them the Fiske Guide and have them draw a list of 30 colleges they’d approve of.
If the OP’s parents take a hard line on their stance, then the only way the OP can attend college in a city is to earn a full ride merit scholarship.
thank you everyone for your help!! I really appreciate getting input from parents and I can definitely see where they are coming from. I am an only child so that may be part of the reason they are hesitant to send me to a large city. But thank you to everyone who contributed! I will try to talk him into visiting Barnard, I think he might like the fact that it is an all women’s school haha. And Howard seems like a great place I’ve never heard of it so thank you for mentioning that!!