@Lancer Most of the elite schools are need based financial aid only. If the net price calculator is telling you 50K, it’s highly likely that when you receive the financial aid package it is going to be very close to that. My advice to you is to open your mind up to some possibilities that you may not realize are there.
Your grades and test scores are certainly high enough to receive top merit at University of Alabama, University of Mississippi, and many others. Likely Alabama would fit in your dad’s expectations of $15K per year. You might have to work summers to earn money for extras, but you have most of it covered right now.
Take a look at what some of the public flagships offer you: Honors Colleges, special research opportunities for top students, etc. These can make a huge public university feel much smaller.
We are also from Illinois, and our son had similar stats. He ended up at the University of Alabama. He’s in the Blount Scholars Program and the Honors College. He is on campus now for his freshman year and just finished a week long honors action project. He’s already had opportunities to meet with professors in his field and had a chance to go visit and talk about research opportunities.
The dream schools for us had to be taken off the table as we found that the net price calculators were actually off and showed LESS than what the school was expecting. The calculators sometimes have numbers for tuition and costs that are a few years old, so were be off by as much as 20% for some schools due to a double whammy in tuition increase plus merit budget decreases.
Find some schools that your family can afford and go visit them. Don’t fall in love with a school that will saddle you with a mountain of debt - it’s NOT worth it.