@indecisivish
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household income hovering around 150k, I'm unlikely to get much financial aid anywhere but the most generous ivies.
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Your EFC may be roughly about $45k per year… perhaps more if there are assets.
First you need to ask your parents how much they can spend each year on college. They may have a college fund for you and siblings…or not.
If they aren’t prepared for college and will have to pay out of current income, then there are many regions of the country where that income won’t net much for college…maybe only $10k-15k per year (more or less).
Once you know how much your parents will pay each year, then you can make a sensible list.
What is your major and career goal?
Are you an IL resident?
@proudterrier I don’t think i would consider WashU “generous” with aid. Yes, if you’re a targeted student (perhaps URM or some other big hook), it’s not generous to the run-of-the-mill high stats student. WashU is jammed-pack with high stats students and most do not receive any merit, much less “generous” merit.
As for the others on your list, unless the students that you are working with are all very high stats students, I’m not sure that they’d get generous awards from a number of those schools.
For some, a half-tuition+ award may be almost meaningless if the school just applies it to need. If the student would otherwise be full or near-full pay, then getting a $20kish discount is good if the family will pay the other $40k.+