Remember also…if your income goes up (and yes that could happen), if you happen to get need based aid, that will go down most likely.
You mention that your kiddo needs 1/2 of the cost to attend Rice in merit aid in order to attend. That’s in the area of $35,000 a year…and that is a lot of merit aid.
Yours is the reality that most of us deal with. We have a finite amount of money to live on and use for this such as college for our kids. Many of us make enough to not qualify for FA and still manage to make decisions for our families that work.
I started saving for my kids college education the year they were born. It was a small sacrifice but it has paid off because those funds will provide the majority of money necessary for our instate flagship. It wouldn’t fund a high cost private college but my kids will get a great education for a bargain anyways.
It’s amazing to me that more people don’t think about these things when their kids are younger. It would be much more painful to have to come up with college dollars now or to saddle my kids or myself with student loans. Finances certainly does come into play when choosing a college to attend.
This is a huge consideration and really should be dictating your actions. IMO, if there is a very likely certainty your child will go to med school, her undergrad institution should be affordable. Med school depends on grades, MCAT scores and recommendations. It’s fine to go to UNM, be top of the class, and get into med school. Where she attends undergrad, if med school is the goal, isn’t that important.
And you have another kid. Is it fair to relegate him to the dregs of your income should things not work out as planned? It seems to me this job is recent. Do you have all the money saved for both your kids’ education? I think you are still in “what if…” territory. Maybe your job will work out fine and you will have plenty of money. Hopefully you will. But I get the feeling you aren’t at that stage yet.
There’s been more than one story here on CC of a student having to transfer because parents can no longer afford the tuition and don’t qualify for enough FA. In your shoes, I’d avoid starting off too close to the edge.
Any chance your D will be a National Merit Finalist?
Regarding applying to Rice, they are one of the few ‘highly rejective’ schools that give merit. But, per the 2021/22 CDS, only 32 first years received an average of $18.7K, so $35K merit is unlikely to happen…so I would NOT apply ED.
None of the Ivies offer merit aid, so unless you are OK choosing an IVY at full pay vs UTD room and board only, don’t let your D apply.
It doesn’t make sense to pay $700K-$1M dollars out of your pocket for undergrad and med school at your (recent) salary level…I encourage you to prioritize your retirement funding over your D’s college and/or med school costs.
And yet sometimes things come up that are unexpected, in our case it was twins (birth control isn’t always 100% effective). Oops. Plus the fact that our in state options are pretty expensive, and there aren’t any programs for in state merit based tuition help here like some other states. My oldest managed to graduate a semester early, the next a year early, thanks to AP/dual enrollment classes and taking 18 credits every semester, plus pay for rent and food by working year round.
@parentofd22 out of curiosity, why do you want her to go to Rice, UPenn, Hopkins or Harvard for a pre-med undergrad? Is there a pre-med value you feel is worth spending $340k for an undergrad degree?
One other thing to consider: are your spending habits still about where they were when your income was presumably significantly lower? If so, then your financial planning may become easier if you continue to spend at the lower level and treat any excess (after income and payroll taxes) as bonus that you can save for various larger goals (retirement, kids’ college, buffer against job loss or income reduction).
Don’t apply ED if you have run the NPC and it comes up with an amount you are not willing to pay. Rejecting an ED contract because you don’t like the amount of aid they give you even though it is commensurate with your EFC is not what the ED contract means.
Not sure what sort of aid you will get at 200k (I read 400k is the cut off of no aid expected), but various online calculators and the FASFA should give you an idea.
With a daughter who wants to go to medical school and being in state for UT Austin with presumably an auto admit, that seems to be a no brainer. I am sure your daughter would rather you shoulder some of her med school debt, rather than pay for undergrad and put the rest on her. Your post seems a little bit like prestige chasing, and that is something you need to figure out if you are willing to pay for. Of all the schools my son applied to, the only one we were willing to pay (and prestige chase :)) full freight for was MIT. Ended up on the waitlist. He is at our in state option, Georgia Tech, as an engineer - which like your in state option is excellent!
Also one more thing about medical school. It makes almost no difference where you go to medical school if you want to go into private practice. Unless you want to go into academic medicine or research, your state medical school is in all likelihood an excellent option. I have close family members who have taken both tracks - strong state medical school (top 30) vs highly ranked private school (top 20). Both are very successful surgeons, with an edge to the state medical school grad due to location. One will be paying off 200k of student loans for 30 years, the other paid them off 6 months after graduation.
Indeed, for those who are Texas residents, the cost of Texas public medical schools is lower than what residents of most other states see for their in-state public medical schools. Starting medical practice with lower debt can mean more freedom in career and life choices, rather than constantly worrying about money or being forced to choose to maximize money even when some other option with less money is more attractive (work hours, career development, ethics, interest in type of work or medical specialty).
If your income goes down then the financial aid also gets revisited. People can re-apply for financial aid every year. Covid was a huge year of changes for many where they needed more aid. You can’t worry about the what if’s because colleges only look at the here and now, what you have saved, what your assets are, etc.
Also, if your kid is interested in med school, then you’re most definitely better off having her look at low cost alternatives and then taking out loans for med school instead. My ex graduated med school in 1996 with $250k in loans from a top medical school. Not a pretty sight. I can only imagine what that would be today. There are a lot of great undergrad programs that feed into super medical schools and prepare very well on the pre med track. Also, many Ivies won’t take all the AP credits and many top med schools will want certain medical school pre reqs taken at University and not be AP credit so make sure you check into that as well.
I would look at Emory which has a great medical track and gives some nice merit scholarships.
For sure! My daughter was just accepted into the iMPA program at UT and I was checking tuition costs. At the same time I looked up their medical school and law school costs and was flabbergasted at how inexpensive they are for in state and chuckled a bit when the in state parents were complaining at the cost of the Masters program tuition. Many of them don’t realize how fortunate they are to have such great schools in their back yard nationally ranked at those prices!
Thanks everyone for the advice! I cannot thank enough and have shared all the advice here verbatim with my daughter - many a times kids believe more when advice comes from others 
We are almost positive of not going the ED route and will apply for Emory, Vanderbilt and few others to see how much she can get in Merit.
I am sure she will get a full ride at UTD and will be auto admit at UT Austin (top 6% are auto admitted in TX at UT Austin). I have promised to fund her Med school if I don’t have to pay an arm and a leg now and she seems to be happy so far
Kudos!! A lot of problems we encounter on CC could’ve been avoided with clear communication and boundaries from parents. I think many of us on CC have “high stat” kids, and would love to send them to their “dream” school; the problem comes in with short-term dreams vs. long-term goals. I think we’d encounter fewer horror stories on CC if parents had the conversation you had with your DD last night. Parenting win that will set your DD up for long term success 
Check back and let us know when her offers start rolling in
Only one other comment: many high schoolers want to go to med school but change their minds. I always feel it is a little risky to base college plans entirely on this goal. I hope whatever decision is made allows for other paths.
I agree with @compmom. Take medical school out of the equation when you are choosing undergrad schools. Yes, choose a school where the med school required courses can be completed (that’s just about everywhere) but where there are options for exploring other things as well.
In-state Texas public medical school is about $210k for all four years now (probably will increase as usual). However, private medical schools can be over $400k for all four years now (probably will increase as usual). Most pre-meds lucky enough to get a medical school admission get only one, so there will likely be no choosing a less expensive one than the one offered.
Ah…but Texas does give preference to instate medical school applicants and must have 90% of instate students in each class (see post above by @WayOutWestMom) .
This doesn’t mean that this student is guaranteed a Texas medical school admission…but it’s a positive marker.
Actually…while TX does offer an in-state preference to its own residents, TX only has a fairly modest in-state matriculation rate–only 31% of TX applicants are accepted/enroll at in-state (public or private) medical school. (That’s an admission rate for TX residents that’s well below the national average.)
While TX in-state admission rates aren’t “California bad”, they aren’t great either…
I remember sitting in a few info sessions at various colleges when this question would almost always come up. The answer was always that you should run the NPC and if you couldn’t afford the tuition the calculator said you were going to have to pay, do not apply ED.