OP, you are getting good advise on the business aspect which complicates things. I would really clear up how this will affect your fin aid.
While your parents may be prestige motivated, dont discount it. Visit the schools you want to go to. Also visit the schools your parents want you to go to and I am sure there are prestigious universities that are right for you.
Even tho you are a high stats URM, you can prevent yourself from being accepted to schools that you don’t want to attend by submitting a poor essay.
As for your career…you can’t let your parents pick that. For one thing, the admissions process for med schools is difficult, and if your heart isn’t in it, your apps will show that and you wouldn’t get accepted anyway.
Luckily, the first year of college would include many of the classes that premeds would take AND math/eng’g/CS students would take,
@Ynotgo - You gave me a good laugh! So funny!
OP: If you want to sell Mudd to your parents you can try sharing this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzR_KHZNACM_cjZTWTlPOHkybEk/view
Your parents sound like well intentioned but misguided and frankly so do you. If you can get into a top school without paying much then why not take a chance? You can pick MIT or Caltech to be your ED or EA but still apply to others as well, your chances to get in one of HYPSM are good but until you get accepted, there is no guarantee and you may not have any choice but Berkely or HM. It’s too early to count your eggs, do that once they hatch. Be grateful that you have great odds to get a good education. Berkeley, Caltech and HM are dream for most, not sort of safeties.
Please ignore the advice of writing poor essays so you won’t be admitted to the schools your parents are forcing you to apply to. As someone who has just gone through the process, I would just lay low to not cause premature arguments and apply wherever they wanted you to, as long as they let you apply to a few safeties/matches and a few schools you really like (Caltech, MIT, Mudd ect) EA. What your parents are doing is ridiculous but is pretty common for immigrant parents who are proud of their child’s accomplishments. Just try hard on all your essays and visit all the schools you’re admitted to; you never know what school will end up being a good fit (and with your financial situation they will fly you out for free). Even though you have great stats, none of these schools are a guarantee so you should try hard on all your applications. Ultimately your parents have no control on your major so that won’t be a problem.
There are lots of (mostly) false stereotypes about the Ivys so you shouldn’t toss out them right away. Also, if you get into one of your top choices and HYP/any school your parents made you apply for and you didn’t like, can’t you just reject the offer(s) and not tell your parents?
Parents can withhold money or cooperation on financial aid forms to force their kids to study the major that the parents want. Most here would disagree with this practice, but it is certainly possible that some parents would do such a thing, which is well within their power to do.
How would they know what she is majoring in? I thought there were regulations preventing parents from obtaining transcripts from colleges without the student’s permission. Anyway, if they have been supportive parents in general and you explain to them why you want to major in math/CS they will probably relent. Worse case senario, you may be able to take out $3000 in loans if that ends up being your true EFC.
Parents can require the kid to share information as a condition for college money or cooperation on financial aid forms.
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How would they know what she is majoring in? I thought there were regulations preventing parents from obtaining transcripts from colleges without the student’s permission.
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There are no regulations that will force parents to pay for college if their child won’t show them their grades or class schedule. In fact, there are probably millions of parents who wouldn’t dream of paying for college if they weren’t going to know major or see grades.
BTW…if a student really doesn’t want to attend a certain school, then one of the easiest ways to ensure that they won’t have to attend is to submit a lousy essay. The parents can’t force a student to attend a school that rejected him.
Sons friend went to caltech. He wanted chem engineering, but his parents pushed medical school. His adviser met with with the parents, and he happily followed his drea, and has a great job. The parents just wanted him to be secure, financially.
I honestly think the student is also interested in prestige colleges. The schools the student listed as their choices…also have good name recognition and prestige value.
It just happens that the parents and student don’t agree that Caltech and Berkeley have the same prestige value as Stanford and the Ivies.
OP doesn’t need to revisit every school she is accepted to. She will likely get into many and will have a month to revisit, choose, and deposit. (Assuming any EA schools don’t work out.) That month is super busy for students who are also studying for APs, which begin in the first week of May. OP ideally should visit as many of the schools as she can before applying. When acceptances come,she should only revisit the ones she is most interested in. Realistically, she will have time to maybe go to five schools, and that would be a very rushed and brutal schedule in a month.
Olin?
@thumper1 You seem to have the idea that I really want to go to either Caltech or Berkeley. Although I want to visit Caltech and Berkeley, they are not my first choices and a reason that I want to visit them is to decide whether to apply to them at all (I don’t think I could survive at Berkeley with my personality and I get the impression that Caltech isn’t very welcoming to people who aren’t intensely into STEM before they get there). I pretty much only suggested visiting Caltech so that I could also suggest visiting Harvey Mudd since it’s “in the area”, and Berkeley because I want to see what a big public school is like just in case I end up there. My real first choices right now are Harvey Mudd and UChicago because I think they’d both be a good fit. Then of course I’ll apply to a bunch of UCs as matches and safeties.
Harvey Mudd is quite intense academically, like Caltech.
I believe UChicago is as well.
[QUOTE So what? That’s not love. These aren’t loving actions. Like many other immigrants, yourself included, they are completely unaware of the fact that there are plenty of prestigious and excellent places beyond HYPSM. Loving people don’t push their children towards career paths that don’t interest them.]
Are you coming from a family, that was one step away from famine, but managed to come to USA, learned English, got job, made tons of sacrifices, but raised their children with the right values? How do YOU know what love is? You admit that you are not helping your parents financially, and you don’t expect that your kids would ever help you. IS this love?
How could you judge other families?
Aren’t Harvey Mudd and Caltech both schools for students who are intensely into STEM and want to work really hard? If that’s not what you are looking for, I don’t think it’s worth a big fuss with your parents over visiting.