One thing that bothers me is that if you put all this money in kid one but the next 2 kids are smarter and harder workers, but you might be burned from kid 1 financially. I would have not called a 3.5 HS GPA acceptable in my kids presence and that scenario would have been local commutable 4 yr option only. If you were wealthy, it would be different, but this is about borrowing money. You have set a standard with kid one that is going to suck if your next kid hits the nice stats that would get into a competitive school had there been the same budget, but won’t be available?