I’ll pipe in with scholarships my son has received so far this year. My son has a 34 ACT, 1510 SAT, 3.98 weighted GPA, 11 AP classes, a fair number of extracurriculars and HS sports freshman and sophomore year but not over the top with ECs or leadership roles.
He received merit scholarships per year as follows:
WVU - $20,500
University of SC - $20,500 plus he is applying for another $5000 merit based scholarship from the engineering school
Ohio State - $15,000
Arizona State - $15,000
If he is awarded the extra engineering scholarship at USC, I’ve estimated that would put our total costs around $19,000 per year and WVU would be around $21,000 year.
We visited both WVU and USC. I liked both schools, however, my son liked USC a lot better, but personally, I think he had his mind closed-off to West Virginia (the state.)
We live in Northern VA. My son has also been admitted to James Madison and George Mason here instate. He was deferred from Virginia Tech engineering (early decision) but we should hear admission news next week. Still waiting on UVA but that is a long shot. My son wants to go to a school with D1 sports so the only schools he wants to go to in Virginia is VT (for engineering only, not the regular school which he should be admitted to as his second choice major) or UVA and both VT (for engineering) and UVA are super-competitive especially for Northern VA kids. He was also admitted to University of Maryland - still waiting to hear on scholarships but not optimistic.
Good luck to your son and good luck getting three through college and I hope you keep that retirement plan on track. I think it is good that your kids will have some skin in the game with the loans - wish we had talked about that, especially since my son doesn’t seem to be factoring in the price tag.