How to Pay for College?

With God and Dad absolved of their responsibility, you should focus on colleges with merit scholarships. You are high stat, URM and lower middle income. Aim at top colleges with big endowments and generous financial aid. Princeton, Amherst, Rice are some of the generous ones.

For lower tier safeties with easy merit, UTD, UF, UNT, University of Alabama are always willing to buy SAT scores to inflate rankings.

Middle tier privates like Northeastern, Baylor, Tulane are likely to give more than enough merit to cover the gap between cost and aid.