OP here-- thanks so much, all, this is incredibly helpful! It seems like, to generalize really broadly, we're talking about largely schools at the very bottom of or outside the top 100 universities and at the very bottom of or outside the top 50 liberal arts colleges (I know rankings aren't everything, but just to help wrap my mind around things), is that right?

Just to clarify, I was talking about a ~$40K COA in today's dollars (adjusted upwards for inflation in our planning, you don't need to worry about that piece.) And it's helpful to know what kinds of places are reasonable to expect a COA of more like $50-$55K too-- we can figure out how to make that work if need be, it's all the places at $75K+/year that we'd really have to make some big financial sacrifices in order to save for.

And to the person who said that almost any A/B student can get a 1400 on the SATs if they prep-- that can't be right, can it? 1400 is like a 97th percentile score, right? That would only make sense if prepping for the SAT is pretty uncommon, and that doesn't match with my experience. Is it really doable for kids who tend get 80th-90th percentile scores on other tests (MAP, etc) to get to a 1400 SAT score just by prepping?

Anonymous wrote:Univ Cincinnati, Depaul, Univ Dayton, Colorado State are all coming in around the 37-43K mark for us for a 3.7W/1300 student.
I am sure if you join the honors colleges at these places you could get even more money/more personalized experience.

My kid got nice merit aid from Dayton (honors). That’s where he chose to go and had a great four years.

Univ Cincinnati, Depaul, Univ Dayton, Colorado State are all coming in around the 37-43K mark for us for a 3.7W/1300 student.
I am sure if you join the honors colleges at these places you could get even more money/more personalized experience.

Anonymous wrote:Your kid is young enough that s/he could start prepping for the SAT. It isn’t as difficult as it used to be but more importantly it’s very preppable. Unless your kid has test anxiety, there is zero reason why a kid that gets As and Bs can’t crack 1400 or higher. If your kid is motivated or compliant, you can use the free prep options. If they aren’t, then an in person tutor service would be better. Start prepping now for the PSAT to get that as high as possible then start prepping for the SAT.

Every single Asian American kid in your school district is doing this until they hit the highest score they can get.

I can assure you my Asian American kids are definitely not doing this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I found that if you can afford the $30-$40k range (all in) many private schools and SLACs will get you there. It’s if you can’t even afford that it’s a problem. My kid with very average stats will do best in a small school, and so many schools got us there. So many of these smaller schools have a lot to offer, but so many of the people here think that a) a school below T50 can has value and b) everyone who doesn’t have a 4.5+/1500+ are failures and too flawed to go to college. It says more about them than the kids.

I would really hone in on what kind of environment and programs are right for your kid and go to a bunch of college fairs. We discovered a couple in college fairs that really fit the bill and my kid got “merit” that gets the bill into the $30-$40 k range, even when the sticker price was higher. That was what we had budgeted for. Think smaller schools in PA, OH, MN, VA.

30K-40K is right in our doable range. Could you share what some of these schools were?

I’m guessing they are obscure schools, because we are not seeing that with top 50-60ish LACs such as Macalester, Oberlin, Kenyon, St. Olaf, and Franklin & Marshall. They are offering merit aid that gets us to around $50k or $55k. This is for a kid with 4.0UW, top rigor, 1550, all 5s on AP exams. The only place in that price range for her is College of Wooster, and again, that’s because she has top stats and got a $50k merit award.