How do I convince my mom that she should let me go out-of-state for college?

You are an adult now.
You come up with a way to pay for it.
Remember the cost of education does not reflect the actual value of education.
You are responsible for your education now, you can get your parents to help, but in the end, it is you who must take control.

As a real example, an MIT bachelor Engineering degree will cost $208,000($52k/year). A GaTech bachelor Engineering degree will cost $64,000($16k/year). On average, at graduation, an MIT engineer will find a job for $64000/year, the GaTech engineer may get $56,000/year. You can either see the wisdom of the math our you cannot.

Remember that you are her baby, and of course she isn't going to want to let go because its hard for mothers to see there kids leave and go of to college. If you are accepted, and you are happy. That will be her number one. As long as you promise to come and visit her. I would try applying for scholarship programs as well because less money is always a winning factor.

Try and talk to her and explain logically how advantageous it would be for your career if you went to the university of your choice. tell her about why that particular college has higher prospects in terms of providing you with employment opportunities. Good Luck

If you want to go out of state, than it is your job to figure out how to pay for it. Your sister did that by earning the scholarships. UPENN Wharton school of business is a fabulous school. You are right in saying that your sister did well for herself by earning the scholarships to go there. She wanted to attend an out of state school and found a way to pay for it that your parents could agree with so she could get what she wanted.

www.fastweb.com is a search engine for scholarships. You can begin earning scholarships to pay for college in middle school. You can also contact the school, WVU, directly and see what scholarships they have that are available for someone like you.

My daughters were required to submit their applications before November 1st so that the could use their college entrance exam scores to assist them with tuition scholarships. Did you do that? They also had to apply to scholarships directly through the universities of their choice and through fastweb. I encouraged them to apply to at least one scholarship a week. They knew that our ability to fund their schooling was limited. They also knew that depending on school loans to cover the majority of the cost of their schooling would be poor planning for the long term. One should never incur extra debt if it can be avoided.

Hopefully, you are not currently a senior...because you may have backed yourself into a corner by failing to answer the question of how the school is going to be paid for if you choose to attend an out of state school by putting the question off until it was too late to come with an answer that will make you and your parents happy.

Remember that when one is choosing a school out of state that the fees involved for schooling can triple. One has to consider tuition, housing, books, school fees, transportation to and from school, parking fees if a car goes with you, etc. Students are considered unemancipated minors until the age of 21 by most universities residency determination policies.

Good Luck!

It is far better to go to a state school or community college than try to enroll at WVU. Believe it or not, you will grow up and after the good times at WVU, you/and or your parents will pay a great deal of money in loans when its all said and done. If you have to pay that money back, that will suck (trust me). Besides, there are many in-state schools in PA that will give you the same experience as WVU (University of Pittsburgh, several schools in the PASCHE system, Temple University, and PSU (although not always cheap).

Scholarships are also far easier to get than people realize. A good site to research is CollegeGreenlight.com. Unless your parents are loaded and paying for your school, going to another school for 4 yrs is very expensive. Not like the old days when one would accumulate loans that took the better part of 10 years to pay off.

Yeah, UPenn's tuition is double the West Virginia amount because UPenn is a PRIVATE university. West Virginia is an average school, but its no where near the same level of prestige as UPenn, Duke and UNC. Its just not worth it to an out-of-state applicant. At least your sister got into an out-of-state IVY league and now that is something worth going to out-of-state for.

If you want the same chances as your sister, apply to better out-of-state schools instead. West Virginia is nothing special and is not something that is convincing enough to go out-of-state for. You need to do better than West Virginia. Stopping at community college can help you wind up at Duke, UNC or other strong universites (you aren't getting in with a 3.0 thats for sure) so you shouldn't just dismiss it that quickly.

You cannot get into Duke or UNC with a 3.0 from high school. You sister got much higher grades since she got into Wharton. You need to get better grades and that will convince her.