Not every kid wants to apply to Harvard

We live in a rural state, far away from either coast. When she was a sophomore in high school, she mentioned that she wanted to go out of state for college, preferably in the east coast if possible.  We told her that we were not going to stop her from going anywhere she wanted to go.  We took the opportunity to throw HYPSM names around, and told her to aim high,  dream big and take a chance. We did not know of anyone going to any of them, we only knew that it was extremely difficult and her chance of getting accepted is as good as any other kid from a working family.

Out of frustration of our pestering, one day, she asked me bitterly "why should I apply to Harvard or  Stanford? Why? I want to know why.  Truthfully, I did not know the right answer at that moment.  In the end, we were not able to convince her to apply. I kind of liked her rebellious nature.