<p>We had a similar situation with my S. He attends a top-10 public high school in MA in a pretty wealthy suburb, and many of his friends are going to Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, Carnegie Mellon, etc. S got into Hopkins, a bunch of top tier engineering schools, and UMass Honors.</p>
<p>His first choice was Hopkins, mainly because of the prestige. They offered no FA though, and we can’t afford anything close to $55K+ per year, so he was looking at $80K-$100K in loans over 4 years. I had him figure out what his after-tax income was going to be at graduation (an eye-opening experience, welcome to the real world 
), and then use a loan calculator to figure out what his payment was going to be, and what percentage of his after-tax income that was going to be (another eye-opening experience). Being an analytical type (engineering major), he concluded (with our strong urging) that it would be insane to take on that much debt.</p>
<p>He received enough merit aid from some other schools to make them affordable (he would have had a small amount of loans (< $20K or possibly even none) when he graduated), but after going to various accepted student days, he wound up liking UMass the best, to ours (and his) surprise. So that’s where he is going. He’s never been a kid who is too affected by other people’s opinions, so he is not overly bothered that he isn’t going to an exclusive private, although he was a little bummed at first. One of his friends is going there too, that made him happier also.</p>
<p>I guess we were lucky that he was amenable to logic: 1) UMass’ engineering school is pretty highly rated, either higher or lower depending on what ratings you were looking at; 2) it’s crazy to have a lot of debt out of college; 3) after your first job, where you got your undergrad is just not that important, and even for your first job UMass stacks up well; 4) if he wants to go to grad school, UMass has a good record of placement at good schools.</p>
<p>I will confess we bribed him a little too. Because UMass is so cheap (he got the Adams scholarship and a small Dean’s scholarship), we told him we’d give him a big chunk of money for a car or grad school when he graduates if he went to UMass. Not sure how much affect that had on his decision.</p>