How to deal with college-obsessed parents?

[DadTwoGirls]

@bneb

today, I brought up to my dad that I wanted to plan a fundraiser for the spring to donate school supplies to our home country (the schools there are seriously underfunded and undersupplied),

I think that this is a very good project. I think that it would be a good EC to list on your Stanford application, and on the application to other schools.

@bneb

but my grades have shown an upward trend

You are in California. My understanding is that the various Universities of California do not care about your freshman year. An upward trend will help.

@bneb

My family’s EFC is relatively high (~$40k) so the budget is pretty flexible.

You are going to need some financial aid if you attend most private schools. It might be helpful to run the NPC on schools that you consider. However…

@bneb

My state of residence is California,

California has a lot of very good instate public universities (including the CSU’s).

I agree with the idea of running the NPC for Stanford (Google “net price calculator stanford university”) and see what the result is. You will need to get information from your parents to run the NPC, and will want to show the results to them.

Stanford is a high reach for the strongest students. If you are URM this will help a bit there.

I got my master’s degree at Stanford. The other students in the same program had come from a very, very wide range of other universities. Many had come from in-state public universities. You might suggest to your parents to save a bit of money for your bachelor’s degree with an in-state public university, and then consider Stanford and other schools for a master’s degree. If nothing else, this might put off their pushing for Stanford for four years (or more).

@compmom

it is healthier to find a college that fits you, rather than trying to fit you to a particular college.

This is very true.

I noticed that someone already recommended the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. The idea is to do what you want to do, and do it really well. This is what I did to get into MIT for undergrad and Stanford for my masters. It is what one daughter did to get into a highly ranked DVM program. However, we did very, very different things. What my daughter did to get into a DVM program for example included reaching inside a cow, which is something that I would have never considered doing (Ew). If you do what is right for you, then it is likely to help you get accepted to a university that is right for you.

@bneb

I would probably want to double major in CS and international relations/political science

One option would be to major in CS, and just take the classes in IR and political science.