<p>I will be watching this thread, too. D has a full ride ++ scholarship (NMF $15,000 + $10,000 honor college scholarship + $1000 engineering scholarship and some outside scholarships) to our state university (which has a good biomedical engineering program). This means money left over (a lot) for her to study abroad during the summer if she wants to. But…the state university is her third choice college. She has been accepted to her second choice college (out of state with $$$$$ tuition, of course), waitlisted to one of her first choice colleges, and waiting for end of the week for the acceptance/rejection from her other first choice college.
Since FAFSA calculation shows that we can affort paying big bucks for college (which I think is twice as much as we can/want to afford), she won’t get any financial assistance from her first or second choice colleges. She can only depend on outside scholarship, which is a lot (>$5000/year and waiting for more), but it is minuscule compared to the expense of the elite colleges.
My husband and I have started to talk to her about staying in state for undergraduate and then go to her elite college or out of state college for graduate school. So far it hasn’t worked yet. I don’t want to crushed her dream, but yet want to make sure that she understands the trade-offs. We also want to make her happy.</p>