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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Does anyone have any tips or recommendations for funding what will sure to be an expensive college experience for our kids?

We have two kids in high school, rising senior and rising sophomore. We’ve got $90K and $83K in 529 plans for them each, respectively. There is no chance we will qualify for need-based financial aid, even when both are in college at the same time. Several of the schools we’re contemplating are places like Cornell and Carnegie Mellon that no longer or simply don’t offer merit-based scholarships. So, we’re looking at $80K+ per year. 529 will cover about a fourth of the cost, but this is still $450K or so over 6 years. Kind of a lot to absorb as part of our monthly budget. What do most people do?

Outside, independent scholarships? Bonuses from work? Exercise stock options? Kids get student loans? Parents get loans? Refinance or second mortgage? Temporarily halt retirement contributions?[/quote]

Are your kids rockstars or just regular DCUM smart? If the latter, then your state school, lower tier state schools that give you merit (Alabama, Kansas etc), or low tier privates that heavily discount. You choose which environment you want. This advice has been repeated nine thousand times on this forum. 
[/quote]

Don’t know, but my rising senior has taken nearly every AP class available and has an unweighted GPA of 3.98 and a weighted one a lot higher. Took the SAT as a junior and got a 790 on math and a 740 on reading / writing on his first attempt. These seem like Cornell-worthy results. [/quote]

That's regular DCUM/NoVA/MoCo smart.  Smart kid, plays by the rules, hard worker.  Still like buying a lottery ticket to get into a T20.

The lack of research you've done on college seems both broad and deep.[/quote]

PSA. These scores are commensurate with performance at TJ…which is [b]NOT[/b] even close to the substantially lower performance of regular DCUM/NoVA/MoCo smart. Let’s not start with the typical DCUM inflation and falsified bragging![/quote]

You're not using "commensurate" correctly here, and I'm a reader for a scholarship organization.  I know what kind of GPAs and SAT scores are out there, and OP's kid is in the "nothing obvious to improve, good luck, make sure you also get excited about targets and safeties" camp.  aa[/quote]

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