<p>jubilant: I’m actually going on a trip with my eighth grade English teacher this summer! We might even be able to head up to Providence and visit Brown! I know that it isn’t the same as visiting in the school year, but it’s still a great opportunity!</p>
<p>I’ll stop talking about colleges for a while. Then, next year, I’ll mention it again. If they understand I’m serious, maybe they’ll reconsider.</p>
<p>By all means visit Brown & anywhere else you can during the summer, if that is when you can get there. But it will be a much quieter place in July than in January. Also warmer, and greener!</p>
<p>btw if you & the Engl teacher need an inexpensive place to stay, there is a Johnson & Wales Inn in Seekonk, MA, just over the border. It’s run by students of the hospitality program at J&W Univ, so it is very cheap compared with similar lodging, and breakfast is included. The students are learning how to run very nice places, so the service is excellent–the building is a little dated on the outside but all is clean & lovely within. </p>
<p>[Hotels</a> near Providence RI - The Johnson and Wales University Inn New England](<a href=“http://www.jwinn.com/]Hotels”>http://www.jwinn.com/)</p>
<p>JRZMom: We’re actually going to D.C. and possibly Philadelphia, so RI will be a side trip. The trip is still in the early stages, but thanks for the tip!</p>
<p>One of my weaknesses is I compare myself to others. I really struggle with that. A lady who goes to my church is the founder of Rapha House, so I’m sure I could get involved in that. It would be amazing if I could. </p>
<p>This is going to sound strange, but I hate driving and I want to avoid it at all costs. I’ll probably get a job in the summer. I know that I could be a secretary for my mom’s office, but I wouldn’t get paid. Would that still count?</p>
<p>My mom told me that wanting to go away for college is selfish. That kind of made me feel bad. I don’t mean to seem self-centered or anything.</p>
<p>fireandrain: That’s amazing that your daughter was accepted! The Telluride program looks so cool. I even have family in Michigan, so it could very well happen!</p>
<p>The comon app doesn’t ask what your job paid. What’s important is that you held the responsibility. </p>
<p>This may sound odd, but over the next two years, you need to focus on your strengths and where you can make some ability or talent stronger, not become so aware of weknesses that you freeze. Focus on your strengths and the weakesses will fall by the wayside. And, you’ll be ready to write some great apps.</p>
<p>There are a lot of reasons that a parent might think of a child going away for college as selfish. Perhaps they think it will be more expensive, either because of actual tuition/fee costs or because of travel expenses, etc. Perhaps they think you will love living in a more urban environment and never come back. Perhaps they want to have you around to help out with the family. You need to figure out what makes your mother concerned, exactly, and work on addressing that concern.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, some people just can’t be helped. I was in South Station in Boston yesterday, and some guy was talking about needing to get his daughters, who he was visiting at college, out of Sodom and Gomorrah (i.e., Boston). Apparently he had been asked for money by a drunk man, and found this so upsetting that he wanted his daughters to come home – he claimed that he had been all over the country and had never once seen such behavior by anyone, even a drunkard. It was a Boston thing, according to him, and Boston was a terrible place.</p>
<p>The lesson is this: if you want to hate an idea or a place, you will cook up a rationale for doing so. Your parents might call you selfish, or complain about the cost of an Ivy League education, or question your ability to get into elite schools, but maybe they simply don’t want you to go away. I think it’s important to get to the bottom of the real problem and start working on it as soon as you can.</p>
<p>mgcsinc: I think part of the reason they don’t want me to go is because they don’t know much about Brown. I think that a visit would really help.</p>
<p>Both of my parents grew up on farms. They don’t like city life, but I do.</p>
<p>lookingforward: I think my strength will be debate. I’m hoping to make it to state next year. I know that it’s very common, but it’s a good extracurricular activity.</p>
<p>Speaking as a parent – I’ll bet your parents are also really scared about how going away to college, to the East Coast, will change you. They may be concerned that you will turn into an East Coast snob, an uber liberal, a Whole Foods & Starbucks aficionado, a pot smoker, etc. etc. </p>
<p>They worry that you will go away to college, meet all these wealthy elites, and realize that your parents are hicks and uneducated and not worth being seen with. They are afraid that they will lose you, and even worse, that you will grow to hate them and look down on them. That’s the root of what your parents mean when they say that your going away to college is being selfish. Because you’re not thinking of them, but of you.</p>
<p>Going to any college anywhere will change you – that’s the growing-up process. And if you go to an East Coast school, some of the above may happen. You may become more liberal politically. You may decide to eat organic foods. Who knows how you will change? My husband and I are fascinated by how our daughter changed in college.</p>
<p>What you can promise your parents is that no matter what happens, no matter how much you change, you will always love them. But (and this is the difficult thing), you have to explain that if they prevent you from doing what you want, they endanger your love and respect for them. If they make you stay at home and go to a college you don’t want to, they risk the alienation they fear will happen if you go to the East Coast.</p>
<p>Let me guess–you are the oldest child, and no one in your family has ever gone very far away for college? : – ) </p>
<p>It’s hard for parents, and it is especially hard for Moms, to “lose” their precious daughters to college campuses. We have had our lovely angels for 18 years and just when they are blossoming into wonderful young women and beginning to turn into “friends,” and not “children,” they leave for college. She is thinking of how she will miss you (no matter where you go) and is trying to minimize it by guilting you into staying nearer home. </p>
<p>(Fix this by getting a laptop with a webcam when you go to college and Skype, or use your cellphone which by then will come with a webcam, to talk with her as often as you can)</p>
<p>And then there is all that cultural stuff about the East Coast vs the Midwest and so on. But you can become a Birkenstock wearing, organics-snarfing vegan in Missouri just as easily as in Rhode Island! And RI is full of people, including college students, who do no such things, and they also have conservative Republicans and farmers in that state, too. Not as many as in Missouri, but look at the size of RI.</p>
<p>On that “going away for college is selfish” thing — the reason you are going to go to college is to go to school. That is the first reason – you are going to be continuing your education. After a couple of years you will be declaring a major in some area which you hope will be part of your path to employment. Maybe the thing you are studying will need for you to attend grad school, too. </p>
<p>You have no way to know today exactly what you will be doing in ten years, but you might have some ideas about what you hope you will be doing. Going to college will help you figure out what it is you do best — as well as give you training in thinking, and writing well (you will probably have to write no matter what you do), and developing leadership skills.</p>
<p>Your parents have no argument with this last part—but you need to show them that the things you want to study are best offered at X, Y & Z Universities, and not nearly as much so at the community college—and you also need to make them aware of the differences between the students at X,Y & Z Univs and the kids at the community college. In our house we call it the “omg I broke a nail!” syndrome. </p>
<p>No disrespect directed to the many commun. coll students who are hard workers and great achievers–nor to others who are using the price difference to give themselves a cheaper path to the state univ—but there are also people who are going there because they did not hustle for grades when they were in h.s., or they are stoners or drinkers, etc. If you are in “US Hist I” because you get a thrill reading the Federalist Papers, you deserve better than to be surrounded by classmates who respond to assignments with “Why do we have to read this?” “What does this have to do with our lives?” and such.</p>
<p>Years ago, before VCRS, TIVO & DVDs, a friend’s wife was an Engl professor at a nearby private college (now calling itself university), one which has a respected business program, but is not a bastion of many other liberal arts majors. But everyone who goes there has to take some Engl courses as part of their core.</p>
<p>She was tearing her hair out because her classes met at a certain time, and there were many absences due to a popular soap opera being on TV at the same hour. She simply could not get her female students to realize that because they were now college students, they should be coming to their English classes and foregoing the soaps. </p>
<p>Had she been teaching at the <em>other</em> university a couple miles up the road (Princeton), she would not have had this problem. </p>
<p>You need to be in school with your academic peers. </p>
<p>My point is this college application business winds up containing a lot of negotiations between parents and kids. Parents have their dreams, and some parents have fears. Students have dreams and fears (yours involve cars <3 ) and goals — and let’s not forget the colleges have their own goals. You have to sit together and talk about your dreams and fears and goals. </p>
<p>If your parents are concerned that you will become something they are not — well, you are going to do that anyway—you are going to be a Missourian of the early to (we hope) late 21st century and you might wind up living in a city–or maybe not–but whatever you do, your life experiences and history will be different from theirs, because you are of a different generation. Not a better or worse one, but different. </p>
<p>You will experience & do things they never dreamed of, just as they have done—they use the internet, order netflix, give no thought to infections that would have killed their grandparents (because they can take antibiotics), never feared polio, they have friends who Skype with sons stationed thousands of miles away — did they ever think they would do these things, back when they were 12 or 16? Did their parents? You are really going to be doing the same thing they have done; you are going to be joining your generation in its own adventure. </p>
<p>Perhaps if you brought to the discussion a more sharply focused goal — is whatever you are thinking of studying offered at the local schools, or do you have to travel in order to study it? Or is it offered locally, but are there much stronger programs in the topic somewhere else? </p>
<p>Perhaps you should develop a list—put Brown on it but also put Washington Univ in St Louis on it, St Louis Univ, and the Univ of Chicago (visit these websites yourself – Brown gets a lot of applications and you are up against a lot of competition if only by virtue of numbers. You need a healthy list for your own sake, not just to mollify your parents). Don’t forget your own excellent U of MO. And show the things each school has that set them apart (from each other as well as from Local Comm College) — courses of study, majors you are serious about, entree to grad school, etc.</p>
<p>[College</a> Admissions Advice - The Choice Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/]College”>http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/)</p>
<p>You might want to read, and have your parents read, the article on this blog that starts with “How much Do Students Learn…”</p>
<p>Also, in the blog there are many Q&As on financial aid that might be helpful.</p>
<p>And:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/09communityservice-t.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/09communityservice-t.html</a></p>
<p>So don’t worry about not going to Beijing!</p>
<p>fireandrain: I will never be liberal. I just think that my conservative views won’t change. So, I really don’t think my parents are worried about that. I don’t plan on partying or drinking/doing drugs. I’m wondering how much I will change. I’m a hardcore introvert, so it’ll be interesting. </p>
<p>I will always love and respect my parents. I would be terribly unhappy going to school in my area.</p>
<p>JRZMom: First of all - thank you SO much! You are so much better than my guidance counselor. Your advice is just so true. <3 </p>
<p>I am actually the eldest child and both of my parents went to college around here. </p>
<p>My mom’s laptop does have a webcam and she already talks to her friends who live far away, so that’ll be nice. </p>
<p>I want to minor in International Relations (and major in political science) There isn’t anywhere around here that offers IR. Washington University in St. Louis probably does, so I think I’ll apply there, too. </p>
<p>Some of the people in my class are so… I don’t even know. They just don’t care about their education. Some of the “under-achievers” in my class say that they could see me at a university such as Harvard, so I take it as a compliment coming from them. </p>
<p>I would like to eventually become involved in politics. I’m a nerd. I watch C-SPAN. My ultimate dream is to be appointed secretary of State. It’s gonna be a long journey. </p>
<p>You’re right about the generations. I can’t imagine what life will be like in 50 years or so. </p>
<p>As I mentioned earlier, I’m planning on applying to WashU in STL and UChicago.</p>
<p>JRZMom: By U of MO, did you mean ‘University of Missouri - Columbia’ or ‘University of Missouri - Kansas City’?</p>
<p>I was looking into Summer@Brown and I couldn’t find when the application deadline is. Is there still time for me to apply to go this summer?</p>
<p>Chelsea–</p>
<p>Here is what I could find on the Summer at Brown site, regarding application dates — it seems there aren’t any deadlines, just first come first serve—but read through carefully yourself:</p>
<p>[How</a> to Apply: Pre-College Courses | Brown University Office of Continuing Education](<a href=“http://www.brown.edu/ce/pre-college/pc-apply.php]How”>Pre-College Program | Brown University)</p>
<p>There are also online courses—way cheaper & just as much learning happening:</p>
<p>[Lessons</a> in Leadership | Brown University Office of Continuing Education<a href=“I%20attached%20the%20one%20about%20leadership%20skills—the%20others%20are%20about%20DNA,%20being%20premed%20etc”>/url</a></p>
<p>Yes, I know that means you would not be <em>at</em> Brown and *in * RI, but it could mollify anxious parents. Also, way lower cost.</p>
<p>They do have a Deans’ Scholarship for those who have both need & academic merit:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.brown.edu/ce/pre-college/scholarships.php]Summer@Brown:”>http://www.brown.edu/ce/pre-college/scholarships.php]Summer@Brown:</a> Dean’s Scholarships | Brown University Office of Continuing Education](<a href=“http://www.brown.edu/ce/pre-college/online/leadership/]Lessons”>http://www.brown.edu/ce/pre-college/online/leadership/)</p>
<p>On the U of Missouri— it sounds like you ought to be applying to Missouri’s “flagship” univ—but you are the native! You should be looking at your state Univ’s catalogs and branches yourself, checking out the depts and strengths of each. The Mizzou site is where I found those distance learning courses for high schoolers.</p>
<p>JRZMom: It says that the application fee is only $45 until March, so I should try to apply as soon as possible. My only task now is to convince my mom. I know that I can always go next year, but I was going to attend Girls State. I guess I could do both. </p>
<p>It would be so upsetting if I applied to Summer@Brown, got accepted and all the scholarships were taken. I don’t think I’d be able to go. :-(</p>
<p>I like Mizzou. It’s a good university. My only problem is that it has over 30,000 students. I know that’s expected because it’s a state university, but I like smaller colleges. I prefer 15,000 students or less. If you go to a huge school, it seems like you’re just a number. That’s just my opinion, though.</p>
<p>Does Mizzou have an Honors program? Many state Univs have special treatment of Honors students, in hopes of getting more of their state’s highest achievers to stay home. </p>
<p>This can be anything from special housing, smaller classes, special seminars for honors freshmen, trips, etc. Why don’t you visit their site and see what Missouri does for her best & brightest?</p>
<p>Summer at Brown has several kinds of sessions, of varying lengths. When is Girls’ State? Look at the Brown site and see if it could be scheduled so the two did not conflict.</p>
<p>JRZMom: Shockingly, Mizzou does have an honors program. I didn’t see anything about getting special treatment, but I hope it’s true. </p>
<p>I can’t attend Girls’ State this summer because I’m only a sophomore. I wanted to attend it this summer and go to Summer@Brown the next. Otherwise, it seems like I’m trying to cram in all these programs for my college application.</p>
<p>Girls’ State 2011 will be held from June 19-25. There are a few Summer@Brown courses that conflict with it, but the one I’m most interested in is The U.S. in World Politics.</p>
<p>I want to go so badly, just for the experience, but I think my parents will say no. :(</p>