<p>Mimi, your mom sounds a lot like my husband did last year. I had done a lot of research on the subject for my work (I’m a freelance writer) and I knew that there are many private colleges and universities that offer great merit aid packages to good students. You can find out a lot about them just by searching this website to start, on threads about good merit aid. </p>
<p>For my own son, who is attending this fall, I have a spreadsheet that compares the yearly cost given the aid packages offered to him. Right now, he has a substantial merit aid package (along with a small student loan) from a very good private university that will make it the same cost as attending a State school. State schools usually offer very little in the way of merit aid.</p>
<p>You might ask your guidance counselor to have a meeting with you and your mom so he could give her some facts. Sometimes it’s less threatening to a parent to have an adult who has the facts present them. Your guidance counselor may also have some great suggestions for merit-based schools.</p>
<p>What I had to remember with my husband (who can be very stubborn, and who at one point was insisting that “there is no way we can afford college for him”) was not to engage in argument about it. You sound smart, so do some research, try to identify good merit aid schools that you would like to attend, and work on meeting the requirments for merit aid. Basically you’ll need the best standardized testing scores you can get, good grades, great recommendations and some interesting ECs. It’s not easy but it can be done. </p>
<p>Please PM me if you’d like some more information. You are a very good writer, which is definitely a plus for all of those scholarship applications. Good luck!</p>