<p>I went on a trip with my youth group yesterday and I was asking a senior where he planned to go to college next year. He told me that he applied to 29 schools and was planning on attending Massachusetts College Of Health Sciences & Pharmacy. However, he did say that he wanted to study business or sports management at NYU or Brandeis (where he was accepted also) but his parents want him to be a pharmacist. Since, he cannot afford to pay for his college himself, he will have to follow his parents wishes. He didn't appear to have a problem with this (maybe a bit sheltered by his parents?) which I thought was very sad.</p>
<p>Anybody else know of any stories similar to this where a parent's wishes for their child went over what the child actually wanted? (Not college choices but the choice of a career)</p>
<p>My Father. He was accepted to Cornell and had wanted to attend their Hotel Management program. He loved to travel. Anyway, he ended up being told he had to major on Business/economics. After college, he had wanted to do something else adventurous, but his Grandmother - who had paid for his college (and probably mine as well through trusts) “encouraged” him to get onboard with Mellon Bank management program. He was a banker for probably 10 years before he began doing anythng remotely that he wanted to do. Really sad and made for a man that was always searching I think.</p>
<p>I don’t know. For some reason I will never know since I had left the nest, my parents said to my younger sibling - You’re going to XX university. You’re going to major in XX. My sibling did and 30 years later is quite happy, healthy and well adjusted. I remember thinking back then that my sibling had no spine…but whatever…it turned out – so I don’t think you can always predict the outcome of the family dynamic. There must be a reason the OPs young friend and my sibling never rebelled.</p>
<p>My mother was told she could only study nursing, eduction or home ec. My grandmother wanted her to have a way to support herself. She majored in Home Ec, took as many science courses as possible. She turned down medical school to marry. She was widowed 10 years later.</p>
<p>I heard from my D that one of her friends’ parents will not pay for her college is she studies what she wants, which is Music Education. I’m not sure why parents would force their wishes upon students this way. I think that going to college is hard enough, let alone studying something your heart is not into.</p>
<p>I know plenty of people who followed their parents wishes instead of their own hearts when it came to careers, choice of college, etc. It’s not unusual.</p>
<p>My D’s boyfriend wanted to pursue music performance but his parents insisted he go pre-med. He obeyed, excelled, and was admitted to med school. In his second year of med school it hit the fan – he left med school, stating it simply was not what he wanted to do with his life.</p>
<p>He then went to grad school in arts management, and has made a successful switch into that field, working with orchestras.</p>
<p>I kind of had the opposite problem. I was sort of undecided for the first few years of college, changed majors three or four times, and eventually landed on the one that I was contemplating when the decision was due. In retrospect, I don’t think it was the right one for me. I wish my parents had been more pro-active in helping me to research my choices and point me in a direction that made sense for me.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is unusual either (for kids to follow their parents’ career instructions), although perhaps less prevalent now than in earlier decades.</p>
<p>Regarding women’s career choices: I can remember when if you were a girl, it was pretty much teacher, nurse, secretary or airline stewardess. Thank goodness that has changed. Kids nowadays can’t believe how circumscribed women’s career expectations were before the 60s-70s, and what an uphill struggle it was for any woman who wanted to step beyond that circle.</p>
<p>My nephew just finished his sophomore year in college. He tried to lay a guilt trip on his parents … “Why did you let me major in music education? Why didn’t you make me go into engineering?” My SIL just laughed. Like he would have listened!</p>
<p>OP, it will be a huge waste of money for the young man’s parents if he gets part way through school & it doesn’t work out. He won’t be able to transfer many credits from that program.</p>
<p>Sometimes parents have a very good feel for the abilities, talents and interests of their kids, even when their kids don’t know it.</p>
<p>One nice thing about CC is that parents and kids can get exposed to careers and majors from those in the business and build up a database of what may be a good fit.</p>
<p>I suggested the CS major to our son as a teenager even though I felt that he would do best as a math major. Along the way, he’s found that he enjoys EE, physics and mechanical engineering and would like to get degrees in all five but he understands time constraints. We’re still trying to figure things out with our daughter but she has a fair amount of time before she has to choose.</p>
<p>While I think encouragement is good, I cannot imagine my parents telling me what my passions were. And since their parents did it to them, I think it was even more taboo for them.</p>
<p>I’ve known many people whose parents chose their majors and careers. This particularly happens with kids of immigrants. Apparently, in some countries it’s normal for parents to decide what their kids will study and what fields they’ll enter.</p>
<p>However, I also knew an African American nurse who had wanted to major in music, but her father made her study nursing because he felt that nursing would provide her with a more stable, lucrative career. She was one of the most unhappy people whom I’ve ever known. She was financially successful as a nurse, and had reached an impressive level on her job, but she was miserable about her life.</p>
<p>Years ago, back in the late 70’s, I started out majoring in architecture, but after my first computer science course spring of my freshman year I wanted to switch to cs. My mother told me that I couldn’t, so I stuck with architecture and got the degree, but went right into a cs job after graduation and have never looked back. The degree was a waste of time.</p>
<p>My mother and I were recalling this a few years ago, and she admitted that she didn’t like cs because she thought that it was just “data entry” – ends up she was making major decisions based on absolutely no knowledge of what she was talking about. It has really affected the way I trust my own kids to make their own decisions. Sometimes the parents just don’t have a clue.</p>
<p>And networking with a variety of parents working in a variety of areas or plugged into the academic community can get a lot of answers to questions that parents and kids have.</p>