Dear Carolyn: My sister had big dreams in high school of going to a highly highly selective college. She was accepted into three and then her world fell apart due to her mental health, and she’s never fully recovered. She managed to finish college while living at home. She still lives with my parents, and she struggles.
I’m married, and we have a high school 10th-grader with a natural talent for school. She loves learning. Her dream school list mirrors my sister’s and my parents are asking me to ask my daughter to NOT apply to three to which my sister got accepted.
My wife is livid and doesn’t want our daughter’s wings to be clipped because of my sister. I think there are a lot of schools and it isn’t a big deal to remove these three if it helps preserve my sister’s mental health.
We are several months off from taking our daughter on college tours, and I’m interested in your thinking.
— College Ownership
College Ownership: I think all involved could stand to turn the temp down a few degrees.
Your daughter is in 10th grade.
You’re months from just the tours. You’re a year and a half from the applications and two-ish years from decisions.
In that eventful expanse, she may drop these schools from her list herself.
If she does apply to them, then they may strike her from their lists. The “highly highly” selective colleges take 3 to 5 percent of applicants now. The chances are even worse for rock star girls because there are more of them, with boys generally underperforming in high school.
That’s why I think your parents’ request was an overreaction, without even getting into the responsibility to your sister, which I’ll get to; “livid” for sure is an overreaction, for a different reason. (Sounds like there’s history.)
Calling it “not a big deal,” meanwhile, is like being extremely generous with someone else’s money. You and your wife are the parents, sure, and presumably paying tuition, but it still isn’t your life, education or cultural fit to serve up as a peace offering, is it?
Put it together and it’s a lot of emotional activity over preventing (or not) an outcome that’s almost two years away and statistically unlikely anyway — all set in motion by, in my opinion, a pretty cheeky ask. It is not your daughter’s job to change her course to bypass perceived possible obstacles for her aunt. Or to approach her intellectual gains as subtractions from someone else.
But I don’t have a say here. All I get to do is suggest things, and I suggest you use the upcoming months and months to let this whole thing sit. Don’t make any decisions until your wife’s and your big feelings get small. Er.
I also suggest (if I’m not too late) having the forethought not to discuss this anywhere near your daughter. Don’t call her extra attention to these schools. Certainly not before you and your wife resolve, in few months from your zen state, how to respond to your parents.
If you speak of this again at all. That is one of your options — not to.
Finally I suggest, with all my soul, that if there is any emphasis in your household on “highly highly,” then you gently back off it. Even just ambient excitement at your girl’s potential. There’s none like the wing-clip of runaway parental pride.
I hope that doesn’t come across as piling on. Because you seem closest to getting that with college, it’s not The Best One, it’s a right one.
