<p>momma-three- I agree that some debt is acceptable to attend your dream school. For some, the $30,000 is fine. For my son to attend his dream school, it would have been closer to $250,000 total for 4 years. And the program he wanted to go into was known for taking many an extra year to complete. Plus, he wants to go to grad school. We do have some money put away for college, but it did not grow like expected. We actually lost money in one of the accounts! If we ONLY needed to add $30,000 for hiom to attend his “dream school”, that would have been more palatable. </p>
<p>So cost, merit offers, and potential loans played a big factor in decision making. It had to!</p>