<p>I am a soon to be junior and plan on applying to yale and mit and some other top schools but not alotk, but my parents are all like why dont I apply to harvard and princeton also. I try to make it clear to them that those schools dont interest me but it seems as if parents want to just brag with eachother about the school that their child would attend if accepted. It seems tthat some parents dont look at the fact that college is the place that you will be living for the next four years of your life.( I am not saying my parents are like this because I know that they just want the best for me, but I have seen some of my friends liike this girl who got a 220 on her psat in soph year and her parents honestly seem to be pushing her into applying where they want her to go not where she wants to go.)Anyone else experiencing this?</p>
<p>Yup. Parents want me to apply to Harvard and MIT, but I really didn’t want to. We settled that I would submit my application to Yale if they really wanted, since they’re paying the app fee I didn’t mind, and I just recycled essays and stuff. The top schools I really wanted instead were UPENN, Cornell, and Princeton. Compromise, my friend.</p>
<p>That’s a common problem. I’m still in high school, but I’ve been away from school due to illness for a couple of years, so I had to reapply to a school last spring. My parents had already decided where I was going, and I had absolutly no say in it.</p>
<p>The issue is control. OP wants to be the boss of his future but his parents still want assurance they still control their kid.The competitive bragging about acceptances is gross but parents will do it.</p>
<p>Linn- that sucks. did you seriously have no say in it what so ever?</p>
<p>My parents are more worried about cost than anything. They’re pushing SUNY’s. I don’t want to go to one. Oh, well…</p>
<p>My parents are the same. The first really high reaches I had on my list were Cambridge, MIT, and Yale. They sort of ignored Cambridge because they figured I wasn’t serious, but when they saw Yale and MIT, my mother was all “You know, Harvard’s a really nice school.” Eventually, people I know who go there + visiting did convince me to put it on my list, but as soon as I did, my mother started asking about Princeton. Ugh.</p>
<p>But actually, a bit after my mother started complaining “Why don’t you apply to Princeton?” I started to realize it had aspects that matched me in ways that my other really high reaches didn’t, so I put it on my list too, but it’s still only half on, depending on how I feel when I visit.</p>
<p>I’m so easily persuaded. You’d think my mother would be satisfied with me applying to her alma mater, Cornell, but no. But I was sort of inclined to listen to her as, well y’know, she’s my mother, so she obviously knows me well. And she had a history, at least with my sister, of picking good schools. She picked out Northwestern for my sister, and now she goes there and is absolutely on love with it. So I feel that even if the schools to which she’s pushing me are sort of “bragging rights” schools, she’s doing it not because she wants to brag but because she thinks they fit me. I mean, I’m sure she would brag no matter how much I asked her not too. She has a history of doing so, and in fact called up the superintendent of our school district (they’re well acquainted) to tell her my SAT scores (ugh!).</p>
<p>I’m sure you know better than I what you’re parents are doing, but sometimes we forget that our parents are not just over-bearing, prestige-obsessed maniacs. Maybe, to some extent, they’re thinking about colleges that fit you really well but at which you never would have looked.</p>
<p>That sucks. You really need to sit down and talk with them.</p>
<p>Sstewart - You know me from the other thread. Since, Carin filled you in, I am a parent of a Harvard freshman who moved in today. D (Harvard) is my youngest. Her older brother went to Tufts. What I am going to share with you, that both my children, chose to attend schools to which they did not even want to apply. Son, did not like Tufts at all until his third visit. He did put in his application but with reservations. When acceptances came around, he got into his first choice school UPenn. The admitted students days, changed him and he turned down Upenn and chose to attend Tufts. He has never regretted his decision. D did not like Harvard AT ALL as of last fall. She had picked out 9 schools, reaches to safeties. I suggested that she add one more. She added Harvard because the application was so easy. The turning point came at her alumni interview. While preparing for it she began to see how good a match it actually was for her. The interview was great and she came out in loving Harvard. She got into 8 out of 10 schools, turned down the original schools that she loved, and is now going to be going to a school she never thought she would like.</p>
<p>What is my point? Keep an open mind. You never know how you will be feeling about things in even 6 months.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>wow that is a great point smoda61 and thank you:)sorry for being an idiot in the other post lol.</p>
<p>Glad I could help.</p>
<p>As for the other thread, glad you got it out of your system. 
CC really can be helpful.</p>
<p>My dad wants me to apply ED to Mount Holyoke, but I’m not sure if I could last another 4 years of single-sex education and I don’t want to commit to any school yet. Then again, I’ve already been with all girls for 12 years so it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.</p>