What To Do If . . . You And Your Parents Disagree About The College You Select

Remember when you were a kid and threw a tantrum because your parents thought you should come inside, and you wanted to stay out and ride your bike around the block one more time? More recently, you may have haggled over curfew hours, your use of the car, or your cell phone bill.
Selecting a college is different from other decisions you make with your parents because the roles of parent and child are essentially reversed. When considering colleges, the ultimate choice is yours, but your parents need to play an active role in the process—and you should welcome their involvement.

According to admissions officials, the best way to avoid a family feud over which college you attend is for you, the student, to take on the job of organizing your college search from the start.
“Parents should be welcomed and included, with the understanding that the student can make the final decision,” says G. Gary Ripple, Ph.D., a former dean of admission and now an admissions consultant. “The student should take a leadership role–– organizing the family as a team, getting and analyzing information—and the student should have the final responsibility because it’s the student who has to carry out—and literally live with—the decision.”
The trick is achieving a delicate balance of including your parents in the selection process while shouldering the task of finding the best college for you—not an easy job for most students.
William C. Hiss, Vice President for External and Alumni Affairs at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, says that one important way of achieving this goal is to have your parents accompany you on visits to the colleges you’re considering. But he urges parents to “hang back” during the visits, observing aspects of the college that may initially elude the student. Parents should offer their impressions only after hearing the student’s response. He also advises students not to overschedule their campus visits; allow sufficient time afterward for a relaxed family discussion about overall impressions as well as the positive and negative aspects of each college.
“If you make the trip that kind of experience,” Hiss says, “you’ll realize that your parents are in your corner. It’s a matter of three adults jointly making an important decision. But in the final analysis, it should be your choice.”
The two most common areas about which parents and students disagree are cost and distance from home. Being prepared for disagreements in these areas can help you avoid them. Even before you begin to consider specific colleges, you should sit down and make a list of what is most important to you in a college—and ask your parents to do the same.
As you begin deciding where you’ll send applications, don’t rule out a college just because it’s far from home or because of its “sticker price.” You and your parents may be surprised to learn that while a college that precisely matches your needs is across the country, airfare, for example, may be included in the financial aid package. Or you may discover that with financial aid the actual cost of a seemingly expensive college is considerably less than the listed price—perhaps even less than a state-supported college or university.
If you can use the search for a college as an opportunity to impress your parents with your maturity and decision-making skills, if your parents can remain open-minded, and if all of you are willing to compromise, the college selection experience could be one that brings you closer together.
According to Hiss, chosing a college is a defining experience for a student and his or her family: “It’s the moment in a young person’s life when he or she can, in effect, run away from home—and do it with his or her parents’ blessing! In fact, in most cases, they’ll willingly help you pack.”
Paul Adams writes about education and business issues from his home in Brimfield, Massachusetts.
Source: careersandcolleges.com