Update: D23 has decided to attend Central MI on the full ride she received. It was honestly 15 days of heck for us parents. Knowing the best decision for her situation was CMU and getting her to see the light.
I will say I got into this game 4+ years ago with D19. I had to quickly get up to speed everything related to college as D19 is our first. This group of people on here has helped us out providing information and insights. All of our situations are different as well as the goals that our kids have. Rarely is there one right answer unless the poster provides all information.
My wife and I were first gen college students that went to a T20 school. We graduated with a lot of loans. We worked to pay them off. We made the decision for my wife to stay home when the kids were little. For those reasons we didn’t have the funds for our kids to pick their school without considering cost. That was tough as we have high stats kids. D19 went after merit. She was up for plenty of full-ride or full tuition scholarships. Her and I quickly realized these were lottery type scholarships. She got close on couple of them. In the end she went to a school that was within budget and at the outset she was going to probably have to take out a small loan senior year. Well she continued to look for scholarships and grabbed some extra money via departmental scholarship that allowed her to graduate with no loans. Also senior year of HS she won $1K from Burger King.
D23 didn’t take to filling out a ton of apps at first. She was super busy and we had to sit her down to get her going on them. Her initial list was OK but I was worried if they would come in at budget. I made her add 3 schools. Eventually she got going and got the apps and scholarship apps done. She was select to be one of the 400 kids to compete for 20 full rides and 60 full tuition scholarships at CMU. Instead of an interview they had the kids write 2 in person essays about anything in US History. She of course selected 2 obscure things to write about. History is in her wheelhouse. I thought she had a shot at a full tuition not really full ride. She got it and now has made her decision. It is not the decision some people would go with but it is the best decision for her.
Based on both kids results in this crazy system I am still a person that believes in just fill out the form and you might just be surprised. It is definitely a numbers game. The more apps done the better chance you have in hitting something. Never give up.
Again thanks for everyone’s help here.