^this, educate the parents on the merits of the schools of interest. They’ve heard of Brown but not Midd or Bates, so you’ve got to tell them about the “Little Ivies,” etc… and use all the Rankings publications to your advantage.
There are a lot of good data sources out there to show more objective things like for example number of graduates from different institutions who go on to earn PhDs (http://highereddatastories.blogspot.com/2014/02/where-did-doctoral-recipients-go-to.html), or comparisons of graduates earnings relative to their modeled potential for different institutions (http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university), or even just retention and completion rates for different colleges (http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/).
You should also be able to find data on educational expenditures per student compared to the “rack rate” tuition, how much financial aid students get at different institutions, the level of indebtedness of students from different institutions, the loan default rate for students at different institutions, etc…
Use these data sources and others to compare the colleges you are interested in to the ones your parents know about, to show that your choices are just as meritorious as the ones that they have heard of.
In terms of getting your parents to agree to doing their basic part on the FAFSA and the CSS/Profile financial aid applications, that shouldn’t be a problem so long as you do apply to one or more of the colleges that your parents want you to (e.g. Brown, U.Chicago, etc… are Profile schools as well as Midd and Bates). The problem may come in that many of the Profile schools requires different supplementary materials for the Profile application.
Good Luck!