How do I get through to my mom?

happymomof1 · April 20, 2011, 4:44pm

ldwendy, if the OP’s financial aid package is good enough, he/she doesn’t need parental approval to go to Pitt because there would be no need for any of their money. He/she could just pack the suitcases and go. It wouldn’t make the OP an independent student for financial aid purposes, but the OP could be financially independent of his/her parents. However, it appears that there is need for parental cooperation in order to make Pitt possible. Which means the OP is left with Drexel as the only viable option.

iPhoneHacker - Your mom wants you to commute, but Drexel still isn’t cheap. Can you convince her to let you do your first two years at [Community</a> College of Philadelphia](<a href=“http://www.ccp.edu/site/]Community”>Community College of Philadelphia |) and then transfer to Pitt/Drexel/Penn State/Wherever?

SlitheyTove · April 20, 2011, 5:07pm

OP, I don’t know if this is possible, but I’m wondering if you can get anyone at Drexel to take a look at your situation and then tell your mom that Pitt would make more sense for you. Anyone whom your mother might actually listen to.

ldwendy · April 20, 2011, 5:24pm

^^

Or perhaps the OP can meet alone with the financial aid officers at Drexel, and explain his problem. The FAO can do one of two things:

1) raise the amount of FA so the cost of dorming at Drexel would equal the cost of dorming at Pitt. The main issue here is that the parents want OP to commute and the OP does not want to live at home. If the mother is so desperate to keep OP near home, she should agree to let OP dorm at Drexel. The mother is having problem letting go of her child.

2) meet with the mother separately accompanied by a Russian interpreter to explain they cannot raise their financial aid offer and it would be in the OP’s best interest to matriculate at Pitt.

wgmcp101 · April 20, 2011, 5:47pm

iPhone, the only international rankings that I am aware of out of Russia is the [RatER</a> Global University Rankings](<a href=“http://www.globaluniversitiesranking.org/]RatER”>http://www.globaluniversitiesranking.org/).

Pitt is ranked #42 in the World placing Pitt at #28 in the US. Drexel is tied for 96th in the World in that ranking, or 47th in the US.

She can go on their website and read the ranking in Russian if she wants to.

I really can’t think of one rankings that has Drexel ahead of Pitt and there are dozens of them. In fact, I did a compilation of some of the bigger international ones a couple months ago. Now rankings should always be used with a grain of salt, but it is just some further ammunition, so I’ll post that compilation below.

You might also want to sell the fact that Pitt just put $60 million into the engineering facilities, with another $40 million in process. That is $100 million investment into their engineering department, and going to Pitt will reap the benefit of those investments. The School of Engineering’s annual report is [url=<a href=“http://webster.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/documents/AnnualReport2010.pdf]here[/url”>http://webster.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/documents/AnnualReport2010.pdf]here[/url</a>], in case it has any useful information to help you. Also, the co-op brochure is also located [url=<a href=“http://webster.engr.pitt.edu/coop/documents/Co-opBrochure.pdf]here[/url”>http://webster.engr.pitt.edu/coop/documents/Co-opBrochure.pdf]here[/url</a>].

Also, as far as the public/private thing, the fact is Pitt was fully private from 1787 to 1966. Then it became state-related, which means (like Temple), it is still privately governed but its in-state tuition is subsidized. It is not a true public, as it is not state-owned and operated. In fact, Pitt was originally founded as the Western University of Pennsylvania, intended to the be a western sister institution to the University of Pennsylvania. I don’t know if those tidbits would help at all, but I’m just throwing that out there.

<hr>

Top 50 average international rankings, sorted by average and then standard deviation. The lists represents the average of six different international rankings from five countries on three continents. I also eliminated any outlier ranks by using the quartile method and double checked them with Grubb’s test for outliers. With the addition of HEEACT, and the elimination of outliers.

Here are the source rankings:
2010 Academic Ranking of World Universities out of Shanghai, China
2010 HEEACT Performance Ranking out of Taipei City, Taiwan
2010 QS World University Rankings out of London, UK
2009 RatER Global University Rankings out of Moscow, Russia
2010 RPI Worldwide University Rankings out of Perth, Australia
2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings out of London, UK

Place / School / Average rank

1 Harvard 1.2
2 MIT 3.8
3 Stanford 5.2
4 Cambridge 8.2
5 Oxford 10.5
6 Chicago 10.8
7 Columbia 10.8
8 UC-Berkley 11.2
9 Johns Hopkins 11.5
10 Yale 12.2
11 Penn 13.8
12 UCLA 13.8
13 Cal Tech 14.5
14 Michigan 15.2
15 Princeton 17.7
16 Cornell 17.8
17 Imperial College London 18
18 Univ Coll London 18.8
19 Washington 21.3
20 Tokyo 21.5
21 Duke 22.8
22 UCSD 25.5
23 Northwestern 26.2
24 Toronto 26.7
25 British Columbia 34.4
26 Carnegie Mellon 35.4
27 Kyoto 35.5
28 Wisconsin-Madison 36
29 Illinois-Urbana Champaign 36.8
30 NYU 37
31 ETH Zurich 38.7
32 Minnesota 39.7
33 McGill 40.2
34 UNC-Chapel Hill 40.3
35 Edinburgh 41
36 Washington U St Louis 41.6
37 Vanderbilt 47.6
38 Texas-Austin 51.6
39 Manchester 52.8
40 Melbourne 55.8
41 Pitt 55.8
42 UC-Irvine 56
43 King’s College London 56.8
44 USC 57.5
45 Ludwig Maximiliam Univ Munich 59.2
46 Maryland-College Park 60
47 Boston Univ 60.7
48 UC-Davis 61.8
49 Ohio State 62
50 UC Santa Barbara 62

iPhoneHacker · April 20, 2011, 5:52pm

wgmcp101, I cant thank you enough for that post!

wgmcp101 · April 21, 2011, 1:08am

Here’s more comparisons between the two schools that maybe you can use. I was right though, in every ranking that I’m aware of (16 different ones), Pitt was ranked ahead of Drexel, even the ones where Pitt didn’t do that well. That is striking, IMO, because that is a universal indication of how they are viewed by multiple, neutral methodologies. Now, that doesn’t mean that Drexel doesn’t have some better or equivalent programs, or that you can’t get a good education there, but anyone who thinks Drexel has an overall better general reputation than Pitt just has absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

2010 admissions statistics
SAT 25%-50%
Pitt 1730-2030
Drexel 1630-1940

Top 10% in High School class rank
Pitt 51%
Drexel 33%

Average GPA
Pitt 3.91
Drexel 3.41

School profile
Endowment
Pitt $2,032,798,000
Drexel $427,023,000

Faculty with National Academy Membership
Pitt 25
Drexel 6

Major Award won by Faculty
Pitt 28
Drexel 7

National Merit & Achievement Scholars
Pitt 28
Drexel 5

Total research expenditures
Pitt $558,566,000
Drexel $96,575,000

Domestic rankings
The Center for Measuring University Performance
Pitt 25
Drexel >88

Forbes
Pitt 201
Drexel 552

MyChances Revealed Preference Ranking
Pitt 253
Drexel 298

US News and World Report (National Universities)
Pitt 64
Drexel 86

US News graduate school ranking for engineering
Pitt 52
Drexel 60

Washington Monthly (US)
Pitt 104
Drexel 129

International Rankings
Academic Ranking of World Universities (China)
Pitt 56
Drexel 301

Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (UK)
Pitt 119
Drexel 401

Times Higher Education World University Rankings (UK)
Pitt 64
Drexel 190

RatER Global University Ranking (Russia)
Pitt 42
Drexel 96

HEEACT Ranking of World Universities (Tawain)
Pitt 23
Drexel 266

RPI Worldwide (Australia)
Pitt 31
Drexel 143

SCImago World Ranking (Spain)
Pitt 34 (16 US)
Drexel 401 (133 US)

World University Ranking by Academic Performance (Turkey)
Pitt 25
Drexel 339

Web presence rankings
Global Language Monitor US MediaBuzz(web) rankings
Pitt 53
Drexel 84

EduRoute World University Web Ranking
Pitt 76
Drexel 334

Princeton Review scores<a href=“higher%20is%20better”>/u</a>:

Pitt: Selectivity 92, Academic 83, Quality of life 98, Fire safety rating 82
Drexel: Selectivity 87, Academic 76, Quality of life 84, Fire safety rating 75

Princeton Review topic rankings:
Pitt
Happiest Students #8
Best Quality of Life #11

Drexel
Least Beautiful Campus #9
Long Line & Red Tape #12
Least Accessible Professors #13

Honors colleges
Average freshman honors admissions SAT CR+M
Pitt Honors: 1457 Critical Reading + Math Average
AJ Drexel Scholars: 1315 Critical Reading + Math Average

Recent major national scholarship winners: Rhodes, Marshalls and Truman scholars.
In the past five years, Pitt has had three Rhodes, two Trumans, and one Marshall. Drexel has never, in its entire history, had a Rhodes, Marshall or Truman scholar winner.

And a last thing about honors colleges, [Pitt’s</a> Honors College](<a href=“http://www.honorscollege.pitt.edu/]Pitt’s”>http://www.honorscollege.pitt.edu/) is open membership, so even if you weren’t admitted into the honors college as a freshman, you can participate, take honors classes, and graduate with a BPhil (Bachelors of Philosophy) degree (as opposed to a traditional BS or BA). Pitt’s honors college has significantly more honors course offerings, including in engineering. The past year, Drexel had no engineering offerings through its honors college and offered much fewer classes.

sopranomom92 · April 21, 2011, 1:33am

Wow, wgmcp101. Next time I need anything, I’m calling you! What a wonderful thing you have done, all this research. IphoneHacker, I hope this works for you. I hope you are able to take charge of your life and attend the school of your choice, and create your own future. I am so sorry your mom is being so closed-minded. You can do this. Best wishes to you, and do keep us posted.

sopranomom92 · April 21, 2011, 1:40am

Regarding this:
Generally, students cannot claim to be independent of their parents until they are 24 years of age or older.

Other parents may know about this than I do . . .

Well, if you have a kid, you are automatically considered independent for financial aid purposes, even if your parents support you. I do not recommend this tactic…

MD_Mom_1 · April 21, 2011, 12:04pm

Doesn’t she want you to be happy? Just kidding, really, but I always love this one.

iPhoneHacker · April 21, 2011, 1:23pm

wgmcp101 thank you so much for those rankings!

Anyway, I sent my mom the rankings, and like I expected, she ignored them. It’s hard to debate when the other side doesn’t use logic. She said that she never expected her son to want to “run away” from his family. I never in my entire life expected picking my own future to be so stressful.

I don’t know what to do anymore, I showed the facts, nothing works, maybe I should just call Drexel and withdraw my application?

intparent · April 21, 2011, 1:47pm

What do you think your mom will do if you do that? I am not totally clear on your FA package from Pitt, or what involvement your parents need to have with that (sending deposit, signing any loans, etc.). Also, when do you turn 18 (or are you already)?

And… even though you say she ignored the rankings, I think you are getting at the heart of the issue (which you have really said all along), that she does not want you to leave home. She has tried to use information about the schools to support her viewpoint, but you have pretty successfully refuted that. So she is back to her true objection. You might tell her… that the only thing that would be better about Drexel than Pitt would be that you would be close to your family. But that you need to make the best choice for your future career and your own future family. And… go back to those earlier recommendations, that you will call home often, come home regularly, etc.

Like was mentioned early in the thread… try to keep from completely burning your bridges with her. If she didn’t love you, she wouldn’t want you around It may not feel like love at the moment, but it really is. I still think you should do what you need to in order to get a deposit in at Pitt, and go there. Hopefully your mom won’t double deposit. If she does that, call Drexel immediately, explain the situation, and ask if they can please refund her deposit since she sent it without your approval.

sopranomom92 · April 21, 2011, 1:48pm

At some point you will have to ask yourself: what is the worst that can happen if I make a decision that my parents disagree with/do not support? Sometimes people soften over time, others become more hardened in their point of view. Do remember that you are the only person on earth who will be with you, standing with you your entire life. Not your parents, significant others, mentors…just you. So you must live with yourself, your decisions, and the consequences. Be kind, but honest with yourself. I do not recommend caving in to your mother’s demands if you truly feel that Drexel is a poor match. Dig deep in your heart to make sure that your desire for Pitt isn’t based upon the need to escape your family, instead of an academic and environmental fit (it doesn’t seem so, but still…). Engineering is difficult enough, you will need your full enthusiasm and focus to excel.

Does your mother believe that the baby bird is never to leave the nest?

paying3tuitions · April 21, 2011, 6:14pm

A few thoughts:

<ol>
<li>If you “sent” them to her online, that made it somewhat easier for her to ignore them. While a verbal/personal presentation might have been wiser (and it’s still not too late for that), I can understand how you feel too worn down to try. If I recall correctly, you did present your spreadsheets to her in person, and you might have sent this additional data as an add-on, which she brushed off. </li>
</ol>

Not to go all Dostoevsky on you, but this is sounding like a passionate Russian family saga. I now wonder: you said your uncle and cousin/commuter agree with you; your dad follows whatever your mom says.

Can you enlist a group meeting with the uncle, dad, yourself and the cousin (at a coffeehouse somewhere out of the house)? Present the data to them and have them work with you to make a second meeting with her.

Honestly she’s being so unfair, unreasonable, and acting this is all about her. It bothers me no end and I’m not surprised you have more than 6,000 views on this thread.

I had said upthread that maybe the men in your family have to impress upon her that she is not being fair to you, as a young man, to insist on this kind of proximity at this juncture in your life.

Another way to work it: go straight to your uncle and beg him to “man up” with your dad and confront the mom together.

BTW, I’m a mom.

mamita · April 21, 2011, 6:16pm

IPhoneHacker-- You’ve received great advice as well as good concrete information. At least, if you were in any way beginning to doubt your reasoning that Pitt has definite advantages over Drexel, you have solid data to back up your preferred school. It is approaching time to make a decision… My very best wishes go out to you on this; I think sopranomom’s suggestion is spot on with looking into your heart as to your reasons for wanting Pitt, on the offchance that it is a choice of rebellion and escape rather than a choice for what you want in your future. None of your posts sound like this is the case. And, it does make sense to say (though you might not feel this way right now), that you wish Pitt were closer, the distance is its only drawback in comparison to Drexel (and how you would plan to keep in touch).

I have nothing to add other than to say that my thoughts are with you for a positive resolution, whether that is enrollment at Pitt or a change of heart about Drexel (one that is not just capitulation under pressure…) . Keep us posted!

iPhoneHacker · April 22, 2011, 9:45am

My mom told me that she sent a Drexel deposit. I don’t know if that’s true or not, I personally doubt it. But if true… argh this whole thing makes my blood boil.

Sent from my SGH-T959 using CC App

mommusic · April 22, 2011, 10:18am

The fact that she’s playing the “guilt” card tells you what the true problem is. She seems like the kind of well-meaning mother who will make up reasons to hold you close the rest of your life! (Does not bode well for mother-in-law behavior.)

I hope you can get the men in your life to stand up to her.

3togo · April 22, 2011, 10:50am

iPhoneHacker … no new advice … just wanted you to know I was thinking of you and hoping everything turns out fine for you.

intparent · April 22, 2011, 11:08am

You have a few more days to deal with this, but you will need to get a deposit into Pitt on time if you want to attend. And ideally call Drexel before the commitment date and ask them to return your mom’s deposit if she really sent it in… I suspect if you explain the situation, tell them that you do NOT want to double deposit and do not intend to attend Drexel, they will return it. IF you notify them before May 1.

What have you done regarding concrete steps of looking at your Pitt FA package and figuring out how to handle deposits, loan acceptance, etc. without your parents’ help? You only have a week, and it is pretty clear that your mom is not going to cooperate if she deposited at Drexel behind your back. If you aren’t sure, you could ask your uncle to review the material with you to make sure you understand exactly what you need to do.

I can tell you a sort of parallel story. When I was 21, I got engaged to a man that my parents did NOT want me to marry. They essentially said, “no way”. But when I made it clear to them that I would get married to him, and they were welcome to attend my wedding (or not, it was there decision), and when I actually started taking action (booking a venue, etc.), they gave in. They offered to pay for the wedding, helped with the planning, etc. They weren’t thrilled, but they can’t actually physically stop you if you are 18 (which I don’t think you have told us for sure). You aren’t a toddler than can be picked up and carried, kicking and screaming, whereever they want you to go any more… but if you want something different and are sure it is the right course for you, at some point you have to strike out on your own.

wgmcp101 · April 22, 2011, 12:42pm

Ironically, Pitt is holding its [13th</a> annual Russian Film Festival](<a href=“http://www.news.pitt.edu/news/pitt-and-pittsburgh-filmmakers-host-13th-annual-russian-film-symposium-may-2-7]13th”>Pitt and Pittsburgh Filmmakers to Host 13th Annual Russian Film Symposium May 2-7 | University of Pittsburgh News) in two weeks. Website in Russian here: [Russian</a> Film Symposium 2011](<a href=“http://www.rusfilm.pitt.edu/2011/index_ru.html]Russian”>http://www.rusfilm.pitt.edu/2011/index_ru.html)

If cultural heritage has any impact, Pitt’s offerings in Russian history, language, and culture are top notch, and beyond anything in Philadelphia or elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Pitt’s [Center</a> for Russian and East European Studies](<a href=“http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/crees/]Center”>Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies) has been designation as a US National Resource Center for years, one of only 16 so designated and the only one in PA (see list [here](<a href=“http://www.nrcweb.org/nrcList.aspx]here[/url]”>弁護士と交通事故の関係)</a>).

Pitt also has been the recent recipient of a talk by [Dimitry</a> Medvedev](<a href=“http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09268/1000709-482.stm]Dimitry”>http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09268/1000709-482.stm), and back in the cold war days, was one of the few places [Nikita</a> Khrushchev](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Khrushchev_Pitt.gif]Nikita”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Khrushchev_Pitt.gif) visited. In fact, Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning was an inspiration for building the main tower at Moscow State University, which is the only university building in the world that is taller than the Cathedral of Learning. Another Russian tie, [Vladimir</a> Zworykin](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zworykin]Vladimir”>Vladimir K. Zworykin - Wikipedia), who is considered by some as the father of television, earned his PhD at Pitt.

mrsref · April 22, 2011, 12:58pm

Another argument you may make to your mom:

“Mom, I love you and my family. My desire to go to Pitt has nothing to do with wanting to get away from you. However, if you force me to go to Drexel, I am afraid that I will resent you. I may even resent you so much that I leave town after graduating. Right now you are using my lack of money to force me to stay with you, even when it would cost you less if I went to Pitt. Someday, I will have a degree and the means to support myself. If you blatantly ignore my point of view now, don’t be surprised if I ignore yours later.”

Seriously. I don’t even know your mother but I don’t like her! It sounds to me like you are making a rational choice, but she’s the one acting like a toddler.

How do I get through to my mom?

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