<p>Thank you everyone for your comments. </p>
<p>I’m definitely doing everything suggested here - going over as much data on schools as I can find, talking to my daughter. She’s coming home this weekend for break, so we plan to go over this more in depth in person… Her attitude is kind of that she really wants to go away - I don’t think she’ll be devastated if she has to do 2 years community college first, but I know she’d rather not. But we’ve begged her all along to really focus on her grades and stressed that we just don’t have any money, and she’s chosen to pay more attention to her activities and social stuff, so her grades have suffered. It’s been disappointing, because it was such an amazing opportunity - this school costs $48,000 a year, and she’s been paying only $1000 a year! Wish she had taken it more seriously, but nothing to do about that now, I suppose. I’m sure she’ll regret it as an adult. </p>
<p>As far as loans so, we were under the impression that since she’s considered dependent, we would have to take out loans ourselves, which we are not willing to do. Partly because we can’t afford to pay them back right now, and partly because we feel like my daughter has had an amazing opportunity and not worked up to her potential, so we aren’t going to go into debt as a result. We’re willing to help her go to community college and give her the opportunity to transfer to a good school with good aid, but going into thousands of dollars of debt when she hasn’t shown that she’s fully committed isn’t going to happen. With that said, I am willing to do what I can for her to help her get into a school with good aid - if that’s possible. </p>
<p>My hope in posting here is that someone out there might have specific suggestions of schools they or their kids have found or were able to get into without such great grades, or maybe schools that are more interested in the other stuff a kid has going for them (like positions of responsibility, extracurriculars, internships, etc).</p>