<p>What schools can she apply to that have at least 10,000 students, cost less than $35,000/year pre-aid, and are more prestigious than the colleges to which she has already applied? The 10,000 student criterion, if it means undergraduate students, knocks out all but a very small number of high-prestige private universities. The $35,000 criterion, even if it only means tuition, knocks out all of them. Merit scholarships may be available at some colleges, but the more likely they are to award significant merit scholarships, the less likely they are to be more prestigious than the three colleges where she has applied, and the more likely they are to have a sticker price significantly in excess of $35,000.</p>
<p>The only private colleges with high national prestige I can think of that meet the 10,000 student criterion are Penn (barely), Cornell, NYU, USC, and George Washington University. All of them have tuition and fees in the neighborhood of $48,000, and not all of them are clearly more prestigious than various “public Ivies.”</p>