<p>“Often they made this choice and think that everybody else should too.” So true!</p>
<p>OP, you are onto something with your original observation. If “everyone” believed that the full ride merit option was the best choice when deciding between it and a pricey prestigious college, then yes the merit school would be filled many times over with just full ride students. But what colleges are bursting at the seams with applicants? The pricey ones that offer no merit aid. So although there are some very vocal posters here that try really hard to convince others that it is lunacy to pay for those colleges their opinion is by no means the standard. Parents that are willing to sacrifice to pay stay under the radar because they will be accused of being “prestige hounds”, “buying into the hype”, caving into the whims of their entitled children, making catastrophic financial decisions, and basically just being ignorant. </p>