I agree that being able to pay full price is different from being willing to. Full price at many of these schools is around 75k a year after tax. If you have 3 kids, that is almost a million dollars. Finance definitely comes into the equation for almost everyone even if you can pay it. We are fortunate to be in state for Georgia Tech and my son got in early. He wants to be an engineer. He has visited the school several times and it is a great fit. He also applied to Duke, Rice, Northwestern, etc. If he gets in to any of those it will still be hard to turn down Ga Tech (as in state students get free tuition funded by the lottery). If you apply to schools that are lower in ranking you have the potential for lots of merit. I think the University of Alabama would be free with a 36.