You are facing very large bills bc of the belief that your high stat kids require certain schools. High stat kids are found everywhere and go on to high levels of success from their lower ranked schools. A large percentage of middle class parents cannot afford to pay 1/3+ of their annual income for college. Those high performing kids attend affordable schools bc those are the only schools where parents can afford to pay the bills without destroying their families’ financial stability.
My ds is a sr at Alabama (and attended for free). He was not an avg atudent with avg stats. (He graduated from high school having completed numerous 300 level math and physics courses.) He has had great professors and educational opportunities (his scholarships paid for grad level courses as an UG.) He is surrounded by equally high achieving friends who are equally motivated to succeed. The idea that bc he attended a lower ranked school that he had to wallow in educational mediocrity surrounded by dullards is just plain false.
One of his close friends at Bama, a very accomplished young woman, has been accepted to 5 MD/PhD programs including Harvard’s. Our ds has been accepted into some of the top physics grad programs in the country. His entire group of friends has had equally outstanding results in their various pursuits whether that is going directly into industry or grad school. (And all of them attended on some sort scholarship that at least covered full tuition. Low cost for high outcome.)
