Sigh. This whole chain makes me sad- and makes me wish that the coming year’s crop of applicants were here to see it. Of course, uber-expensive, country club-style environment Bucknell and Lehigh ‘feel’ wonderful and seem like a ‘better fit’ than College Park or CU. Expensive things are often very tempting!
Learn from this for when you go looking to buy your first place: don’t look at property you can’t afford, because it will make the perfectly good options that you can afford look ‘less’. And between you, your parents and your GC you should have been able to figure out before you applied what was affordable and not tormented yourself. Your parents aren’t helping much, either, by making it clear which sticker they would rather have on the back of the car.
As an engineer you have the potential to do very well financially, and you will be able to pay off some amount of debt. But don’t overlook the fact that setting up adult life has a lot of costs, and the more debt you have to service the harder (and less fun) it is. UMd actually has a really, really well respected engineering program. Graduating with little or no debt from a well recognized program- with great contacts for internships during the program and jobs on graduating- is something you will appreciate long after the college sticker on the back of the car is gone.
By all means, call up Bucknell and Lehigh and ask for more money- but be aware that they have heard this story- and much harder ones- many, many times before, so if (more likely, when) they turn you down, don’t take it personally.