Mama- and to add to Twoin’s excellent post- so much depends on your own kid. There are kids at High Priced U’s majoring in Beer Pong and sorority parties. To me- this is not worth asking the entire family to make sacrifices. But if you have a kid who views college as an intense, four year intellectual experience and is prepared to make the most of it- then making those sacrifices is more of a joy and less of a chore.
My kids knew how hard we had saved to make their educations possible. We loved hearing about a symposium or a poetry reading or a gallery opening or a concert they attended- not because it was required, but because when you are on a college campus, this stuff happens every day (and most of it is free). If they’d have spent their entire leisure time at college watching reruns of 1980’s sitcoms, I wouldn’t have felt the same way about the financial sacrifices.
Know your kid. Mine don’t ski- although Twoin’s point is very well taken. I do know parents who are trying to make their kids leisure time/sporting activities dreams come true via college and that is not something that I would have been prepared to do. College not near year round surfing? Not my problem.
To us there were places that were indeed special enough to be full freight payers. Each kid had a list of those. But the GC’s at their schools were surprised when Mom and Dad took off some schools (especially the private safety schools). Just not worth it to us as a family. There are plenty of public U’s which have more rigorous academics in the kids areas of interest that we didn’t want to even get into a discussion come April about paying for one of the less-rigorous privates.
So academic rigor was more or less our breaking point on the finances. I wasn’t paying full freight for a four year party.