Parental issues re: Uni vs. LAC

Keilexandra
Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:39:47 +0000

I’ve always known that my parents were anti-LAC–they’re typical Asian parents who want big and urban with lots of resources, notwithstanding that I want small-town community–but now it’s come to finances. My mother has stated that she will pay 20k (our EFC) for any of the USNWR top 50 national universities, but only the top 25 LACs. (This is an improvement over her thinking that AWS were matches.) My parents place a big emphasis on acceptance rate, prestige, rankings, and location (NE). They can’t seem to understand why I don’t want to attend a large university, why I prefer tiny no-name schools. I’ve done a lot of research and I can articulate clear reasons for my preference–but telling them, repeatedly, has done me little good. Any school also has to be “better” than UDel–my in-state flagship, a guaranteed admit, probably merit money to bring cost down to ~10k, and a terrible fit on many levels. I thought I could count on Beloit as a safety that I love, but to my parents, no prestige + Wisconsin = not worth 20k.

I’ve looked into merit aid previously and will be giving those schools another good, hard look. But this thread is for a different purpose: how do I convince my parents that LACs are at least equally worthy as universities?