I can not convince my child to go to Full Ride Safety School

[ucbalumnus]

Looks like @Hoggirl (#63) and @OrchidBloom (#70) are examples of where the parents and student talked early about financial constraints before applications were made, setting the parental rules ahead of time, so that elimination of unaffordable acceptances was a quick and easy matter in April (of course, that also meant that obviously unaffordable schools could be pruned from the application list before wasting any effort applying to them).

This quote says how things can go wrong when the parents and student do not have the pre-application money talk:

@OrchidBloom

Anyway, I am SO glad that my parents talked to me about financials before I started applying. A lot of my friends are currently entrenched in battles with their parents about wanting to attend a more expensive school and I feel really lucky that I was able to avoid it all. Trying to shield kids from the financial aspects may be well-intentioned, but ultimately does them a disservice. One of my friends got into UC Berkeley, but probably won’t be able to attend because of finances. She’s frustrated because she feels like she wasted all of her effort applying, and wishes that her parents just told her earlier so that she knew not to bother.

Do most parents and students have a pre-application college money talk (like @Hoggirl and @OrchidBloom ), or do most leave it until April (like @OrchidBloom 's friends)?