Now that the mentality for American college searching is “shopping around” for the best college, if they didn’t get higher education in the US, are they still reliable for advice?
Some parents are a reliable source of information, some aren’t. Parents aren’t all the same. No one here knows your parents so we can’t say if they are a good source of info or not.
Are you a US student who is the first generation to go to college here, or are you an international applicant? The answers are a bit different in those two cases.
If your parents are not familiar with higher education in the US, they can read through everything at www.EducationUSA.state.gov for a useful summary of the application process. They will quickly begin to see what is different and what is the same about education here and where they are from.
If they don’t know how studying here, and studying the major you want, will affect your employment prospects after graduation, they can inform themselves by discussing this with people who actually hire US college graduates with that major. This is especially important for international students who need to return to their home countries after graduating and completing any OPT time they have available.
Shopping around for the best education at a good price is not new. Students have always considered their options. It is just that with the expansion of access to information, many more options have come into consideration. This is not always a good thing as it leads to applying to increasingly longer, and often less well-focused application lists. Ultimately though, most students do tend to end up at colleges and universities within a couple of hours driving time of home, and the single largest group continues to attend local community colleges and commuting distance colleges and universities. If you end up doing that, things can still turn out well for you.
Find good ways to let your parents engage in the college search process. They know you better than anyone else, and will have good insights into your ability to adapt to different college environments.
This is a very subjective question and would depend entirely on the specifics of the situation.