<p>Is it right to force a child into the college that you want them to go to? I know some parents that tell their children that they will only pay for the college that they choose and that if they choose any other college, they have to get their own money. I think that’s a little harsh. But how strongly should you push your child into the college YOU think is best for him/her?</p>
<p>“He who pays the piper calls the tune.”
A lot of parents let their kids know that their college choices will be limited due to family finances. That is just being realistic. Usually they can come to an agreement. If there are other reasons (not financial) why a parent might want to choose a particular college (religious, philosophical, geographical, prestige, etc.) it might seem to make less sense to the student–but again, parents can do what they want and put any limits they choose on how they spend their money.</p>
<p>Students who insist on attending a college their parents won’t pay for are free to pay for it themselves. </p>
<p>Personally, I pushed one of my kids to accept the biggest merit scholarship he could get, and my kid didn’t protest. This is NOT at the college that is “best” for him, but it is best for our family finances.</p>
<p>I think the better way is for the parent to say what they can afford, so the student can find the best option that meets the financial criteria (whether it is through need or merit aid, savings, loans and work or parent funds alone. That prevents the student from having false hopes that the acceptance from XYZ will sway parents, who have agreed only to pay for the total cost of flagship U. </p>
<p>I do think that parents should also have a say over the school if there is a solid reason. I wouldn’t pay for a school that is not accredited, has an unusually low retention rate, etc. But the parameters are best set in the beginning so all options can be known.</p>
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When I see the word “force” I think gestapo and jack boots. How do parents “force” their kid to attend a certain college? Ultimately, the child chooses to go along with their demands or bails.</p>
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<p>It does appear that the OP’s question is more related to parental restrictions far beyond basic affordability issues or avoiding serious academic defects (like lack of regional accreditation) than trying to ensure that the student knows the basic affordability issues before making the application list.</p>
<p>Technically, parents cannot “force” their children to go to college. The child has the option of not attending college or of paying for it him/herself.</p>
<p>But these are not realistic options for many young people. They may have career aspirations that require college, and not going would force them to change the whole plan of their lives. And paying for one’s own college education is extremely difficult – probably impossible for many students.</p>
<p>So realistically speaking, parents can force a particular college on a child by refusing to contribute to the cost of any other.</p>
<p>But I don’t think it’s a good idea. Setting some parameters (especially regarding money) is reasonable. Giving advice is reasonable. Forcing a child to go to a particular college doesn’t seem reasonable to me. </p>
<p>Our son was accepted by two similar universities, both of which we could afford When visiting, he had preferred college A. But his father pointed out that college B had a better program in his planned major. He chose to attend B for that reason. If he had chosen A, we would not have stopped him from going there.</p>
<p>For most students, no, I don’t think parents should force anything – except for setting financial parameters. However, there are some students who may need to be told where they can go. A student with serious physical or emotional difficulties may need to be close to home or within a very short distance of a hospital. A student with autism may need to be close to home or at a college that is particularly good at giving autistic students the necessary social support.</p>
<p>We’ve “influenced” their choices by giving them suggestions of schools to consider based on what they want/don’t want and they know the ultimate decision is going to come down to money but after that, it’s up to them.</p>
<p>We have some friends that have “forced” their older kids to attend a local school. Their youngest has NO desire to attend that school and they want him there too. It is NOT a good fit for him in any area. As a result, he hasn’t done any college looking/planning, etc. He will be a senior this fall and is paying most of his own way. </p>
<p>Let the kids lead the charge. I don’t care who is paying for the schooling, it is still their college choice. I have no issues with saying “we will pay $X toward your schooling” and then have the kid find out how to make that work though.</p>
<p>I have a child with several serious health conditions and I would not have dreamed of limiting her. In fact, I probably overcompensated by going with her not once, but twice, to a school half way across the country. In the end, she herself chose to be within an hour of home and very close to her doctors, and I am glad she did, but anyone who has parented a child with chronic illnesses from a young age would probably handle the issue the way I did. It’s the only way to respect the autonomy of a kid whose autonomy and freedom had been compromised in so many ways by health issues.</p>
<p>compmom–That is something we have addressed with our DD who has a chronic health condition as well. It is just something that we add to the list of “must haves”–being close enough to good medical care, which, for her, can be within an hour or two as nothing she will encounter will need immediate emergency treatment but needs to be a big enough medical center that they will have dealt with her not so common issue.</p>
<p>We had a conversation with our kids BEFORE the applications went out. We didn’t have many criteria for their college choices…but we did insist that they either go within a 3 hour drive from our house OR within an hour of a close relative or family friend (in case of emergency…and we DID need to use this once). Our kids knew what our financial needs were, and they also didn’t add schools to their lists without talking to us first. They made excellent choices.</p>
<p>I think if parents feel they need to be in control of the final college choice, they should make this VERY clear right up front. This is a personal family decision and some of us might feel one way about it and others a different way. BUT the family needs to have this conversation. </p>
<p>Personally, I think the time to veto colleges is BEFORE applications are sent (if you are going to parent veto any choices). That way, any college the kid applies to would be something you helped choose.</p>
<p>thumper–I agree. DS has one school on his list that is a lottery school and a financial reach. He knows full well that if he gets in and the money isn’t right, he can’t go. We are allowing a little leeway on what we will contribute IF he gets into that school, but not much.</p>
<p>First of all, if the parents are the ones paying, they have the right to decide for what they will, reasonable to most of us , unfair, foolish, and worse. Whether every person polled feels that a parent is being crazy refusing to pay for Harvard when the funds are available, insisting, say, that the student stay within a certain parameter from home, or stating that college would only be paid if the student took a certain major or kept a certain gpa, is entirely that parent’s right. Unless there is a specific court order or other legal document signed and sealed saying otherwise, a parent can refuse to pay a dime toward ANY of his/her children’s expenses, once age 18 is attained. </p>
<p>Personally, unless there is an affordablilty or other striking issue, I feel that it is foolish for a parent to insist on many of these things. You are far better off as a parent , to have the momentum of a student’s personal choice in terms of which school and course of study. But that is entirely the choice of the parent.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, yes, all of this would be up front, but it rarely works this way. The parent’s feelings and knowledge about the whole process evolves through it and is very likely to change. I’ve seen it go both ways. Parents who rant and rave and say they won’t pay over state college costs, that the kids have to commute, will often capitulate when the “chips are in” and the decision has to be made. Conversely, parents who have told their children that the decision is “up to the applicants” and not to worry about money, are singing a whole other tune in April. I’ve seen some hard decisions have to be made and a lot of reneging of promises when it comes right down to making the payment and everyone has to face the fact that the money is simply not there. My son’s girlfriend had to abruptly change college plans when her parents could not qualify for loans, and the school had no resources to help. We read about these cases a lot, even right now as students are finding that the money is not there.</p>
<p>My D had to rule out her #1 favorite (William & Mary) because attending would require debt. </p>
<p>Her final decision came down to 2 debt free schools: Gettysburg v. Muhlenberg. She made a weighted scorecard of 14 factors and Gettysburg won 107 to 103. The “parental preference” factor was worth 5 points and, one could argue, became deciding factor. Without that criterion, Muhlenberg would have won. </p>
<p>So now, if she’s not happy at Gettysburg, we’ll always wonder if sharing our opinion landed her in sadness. :o</p>
<p>Sigh. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.</p>
<p>Joining the chorus. The parents have the legal right to impose a college choice on the basis of “I’m paying for it, I get to make the decision.” </p>
<p>But IMO, any parent who chooses to use that legal right is ignoring the best interests of the child; because part of going to college is learning to make your own decisions and take responsibility for those decisions, and taking away the ability to make such a major decision detracts from the opportunity to learn an important lesson.</p>
<p>Certainly, parents have the right to lay down financial guidelines - this is what I can pay, and no more - and no one can criticize that. But within the specified budget, it should be the student’s choice.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean a parent cannot offer advice, cajole, urge, etc., help a student think through the realities, and make sure the student considers all the relevant factors and options. In our case, where DD was set in her views that she wanted to attend a big university in a big city, all it took was a suggestion to at least look at some other types of schools. We visited a number of smaller universities and LACs, and DD was impressed with the degree of personal attention she got in the process. She wound up not even applying to the school that she had declared at the beginning of the process was her first choice, and is going to a school with about 5600 undergraduates in a town of 17,000.</p>
<p>SteveM: We’re in the same boat except most of the schools my daughter is choosing are either lottery schools or OOS public institutions. We required that she pick at least one in state financial safety that meets her criteria. I have promised to cover our EFC but that beyond that money will have to come from merit aid, need based aid, grants or loans which she can get on her own. She has dismissed two in state publics which would guarantee her free tuition strictly on her high school record. I feel the chance of her going to her safety is quite high but I haven’t told her of my opinion. It will be her decision but money will definitely be the determining factor.</p>
<p>Sometimes parents will refuse to pay for certain colleges for good reason. My dear friend put out the stipulation that her DD had to commute late in the process, when it became clear that the girl was not likely to be able to take care of certain health issues herself. It was an agonizing decision for my friend, and not done with out a lot of discussion and consultation with experts and research and seeing how things were going right to the 11th hour. In retrospect, it would have been kinder to have put down that requirement from the onset of the college process, but the parents were not at the point at that time. </p>
<p>Other factors come into the picture too. Finances are big tipping points that could knock school out of the picture with just one adverse event during the application process.</p>
<p>Another issue is if the student does not keep up his/her end of the deal. My cousin made his son stay home after he got into a lot of trouble over the summer that he felt showed enough lack of judgement that he (the parent) did not want to pay for him to go away to school. The young man had to show that he was capable of staying out of trouble and doing the work.</p>
<p>Or sometimes the reasons for going to a very expensive school are not worth it to the parent to want to pay the money. When her daughter was accepted to an honors program at a state university, and after visiting the facilities and looking at what one got for the money, another friend felt that the school her daughter wanted was just not worth 3X the price, especially when the reasons for going there seemed to be prestige among peers, a couple of people the girl liked going there. Another told her daughter to cross off any colleges more than a few hours away after a disasterous year with a sibling cross country for college.</p>
<p>Have you guys seen some of the recent Zits comic strips? The teenager is making up his potential college lists…the ranking criterion seems to be best party schools…and he just doesn’t get his parents’ concern that maybe that shouldn’t be the sole criterion!</p>
<p>That said, it’s best that parents and students come up with a list together. In our family, we bought a bunch of college guides and leafed through them, talked to the GC, talked to parents/students a few years older, and together we cobbled together some lists.</p>
<p>If I came across a school that seemed interesting to me, based on what my student was seeking, I’d pass the info along…and tell student why I thought it might be a good fit…and he would check it out with an open mind. Student might hear about a school, think it was interesting, tell me about it and why it was interesting, and we could put it on the list. Some schools I proposed, he wasn’t enthused about, and he told me why–and they did not make the list. Some schools he proposed, and I or dad were not enthused about, and we discussed why, and those schools didn’t make the list.</p>
<p>There was no reason to be adversarial…we were all wanting to achieve the same goal. I guess we ultimately had veto power, but we never felt that way. Our boys always knew we were on their team.</p>
<p>Two of my sons ended up applying early decision, and ended up very happy at their first choice schools. One son ended up applying to and getting into 11 schools…at the beginning of application season he was equally drawn in two really different directions and we wanted to help him keep his options open because seniors go through so much maturation. He chose a school that was great for what he thought he wanted. Along his college journey, he discovered a new area of interest, and his school wasn’t so great for that…but it wouldn’t have been on his radar in high school anyway.</p>
<p>Some parents may be willing to pay more for prestige, I think they are often mistaken, but it can be an issue. For example ds got into Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and I think many parents would have pushed him to go to Harvard - especially since their financial aid initiatives meant that it would probably have been cheaper for us! We didn’t do that, but we did make our son go to the accepted students weekend and weigh the decision carefully.</p>
<p>I do think if parents are being forced to pay for college they have veto power, for better or worse.</p>
<p>All of mine chose colleges that were not what I would have chosen. We let them choose, though we gave our input. But that is not how some parents do things.</p>
<p>I have a friend whose father only gave allowances to his children at college if they went to mass regularly while at school. He had the same conditions for his grandchildren who initially snorted and then capitulated finding that it was easiest way to make that kind of money.</p>
<p>Another grandparent would pay for premed majors only with a certain gpa, and would not only pay for medical school, but would financially help any family member married to a med student. When he died a few years ago, those who became doctors, got a much bigger part of the estate than the others. His money, his choice. Not fair, but life is not fair.</p>