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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To OP, you are absolutely right that certain items require your input.

What is the budget and does a prospective college meet need?

What might the student want to study and can they direct admit into that area? This is huge and an area you can help.

What type of campus will fit? You can take them to different schools by size, location and urban/rural easily and affordably.

Do they have a mix of schools including targets and likelies?

Point of all this is that you can help them, but the ways to help are fairly well documented on these boards and others.

We can help if you give more direction. If it is just pure stress you may need to speak with someone in higher ed or a therapist.[/quote]

I am overwhelmed by all of it. Money is a huge stressor because we make enough that we won't get aid, but are young enough that our careers ramped up recently so we do not have huge amounts saved that would make it an easy decision. They both have some idea about a lot of this, but I worry we should not pay for it and just do a college in state, while thinking it will be our fault if they hate it and could have gone somewhere else and we were just being cheap.[/quote]

Instead of lying in bed at 2am ruminating on this, [b]you and DH can come up with a plan.  How much money you have or plan to contribute and the kids can either choose schools that fit into that budget, or they have to take on the costs above and beyond.  And it's your job to explain to them what that means, and how student loans and interest work.  Be real about it with them.  [/b]

We'd all love to be able to send our kids to whatever school their heart desires regardless of how much it cost.  But that's not reality for the vast majority of parents.  And good grief, do not worry about your kids saying it's your fault they hate their college and accuse you of being cheap.  Why would you think that, have you raised them to feel this way?

[/quote]

+1 Time for planning! Figure out what you can cash flow, what you have in savings, what you think is reasonable for parent loans and student loans and go from there.

FWIW, my parents told me I couldn't go to some schools I'd have liked because of cost. I ended up loving my in-state public U and never thought they were cheap. With my two kids, we were in the no-need-aid camp and set a firm $40k max budget for each kid with the caveat that they could take out federal loans if it was important to them to go somewhere out of the budget or, if they chose something that was less than what we had in 529s, they could use the extra for grad school (which otherwise is on them). Neither had an issue with that and both are at schools that cost us &lt;$30k/yr.

It's actually kind of freeing to have those limitations along with both having less-than-perfect grades. We just weren't going to be playing in the T30 game. And learned there are a ton of great schools that take B+/A- students and fit our budget. Try to move from the place of stress and uncertainty to curiosity about all the many options they can have.[/quote]

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