<p>FresnoMom - as you can see from the spirited discourse, there are many things to consider.
You should to continue to pursue learning all you can about financial aid, which schools will be good merit aid choices for him, which schools will be most likely to meet 100% of his need with the most acceptable packages/least loans (often those with the biggest endowments).</p>
<p>He needs to get into gear with his criteria - it is wonderful that he seems easy-going, with fairly wide criteria for an acceptable school, that menas he will probably be happy wherever he ends up. The downside is that now is the time (I’m assuming he is a senior) that he needs to be narrowing down that list. Since FA is of the utmost importance, and he is a good candidate for substantial FA with a carefully donw list, then he has to select the “winners” very carefully - in other words he needs to develop some more criteria. This is a good subject for what my kids call a “car talk” or an ice cream talk, where you sit together, and just start talking about what he wants. He probably has criteria, he has to prioritize them - is suburban more important than small school, does he want to study classics at all, are frats a deal killer, more importantly does he want to live on campus all 4 years, how far from home does he really want to be, etc. Often just applying 3 successive criteria will turn a list from unwieldy to manageable.</p>