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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Correct.  It's insane to tell your kid to apply when there is no realistic way that the parents can pay for it.

I'd be that OP probably has a HHI of $250K.  Clearly a good HHI but not one that generally allows a DC resident (with the associated cost-of-living) to pay for $85K/year for college for two kids back-to-back. 
However, it's way too much to qualify for financial aid at any school (Princeton, Harvard included). 
There is zero way these schools are going to magically come up with aid.

I'm in this income bracket as are most of many of my friends in DC.  We don't send our kids to Amherst or Northwestern or Harvard because we can't afford them. 
There is a whole slew of kids at Walls and Wilson (Jackson Reed) who go to lower ranked schools because their parents don't have the $80K+/year for these school but because they're in the $200K+ income 
range they do not qualify for aid.  The kids who do attend are either 1)wealthier 2) poorer.  Plenty of both in DCPS.

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OP here. Thank you for posting. And yes, you are right. My stats match those you mentioned above. So then what do you do? Where does your child apply? The push for public is strong because of DC TAG and no need based financial aid, but she wants to see if she can get into harder schools knowing we can only give her about $30K/yr. Why not attend a fantastic public school who pays a strong student like you to attend is my thinking? Why be in a sea of high achievers at a place like Princeton only take out loans that force you into debt?[/quote]

You have to manage her expectations. Having perfect grades, perfect test scores, and some awesome hook is only the price of buying a lottery ticket to the highly rejective schools. And the lottery ticket does not give you an equal chance to win one of X number of seats for the entering freshman class. The stats are out there if you look for them -- schools like Princeton and Yale have many, many of their available seats go to full-pay kids (especially early decision children of alumni as well as international students who get no aid) as well as those who are recruited for sports, etc. And I do not disagree with affirmative action at all, but it's also just the simple truth that these elite colleges are making up for decades and decades of discrimination and exclusion by recruiting first-gen college kids.

The costs of applying to schools where average high-achieving kids are: 1) it takes time to write all those essays, time which should be better spent on essays for schools at which your kid has a reasonable shot; 2) it takes money to pay for all the application fees, which adds up; and 3) there's a psychological cost of getting hopes up that are sure to be dashed, whether a) your kid gets rejected or b) by some miracle they are accepted to a highly rejective school and you simply can't afford it. There's also a psychological cost to reinforcing the message that the only way to success in life is to get the golden ring of an Ivy or comparable degree (MIT, Stanford etc.).

You are the parent and you really have to have the come to Jesus conversation with your kid, so that you help set them up for success not only in developing the right list of schools to apply to but also in managing expectations and understanding about the true costs of college and the fact that it's simply not necessary to get the golden ring to have a happy and successful life.

Understanding which colleges offer merit (not financial) aid is key to developing the right list. I recommend Jeff Selingo's book and website about which colleges are buyers and sellers:

https://jeffselingo.com/which-colleges-are-really-buyers-and-which-are-sellers/[/quote]

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