<p>As Thumper said, many families, including my own, don’t have significant college savings for many reasons, but usually the colleges don’t care. The bottom line is what you are making now and how they meet need. I know many students that had fully funded college funds and they went to college on full or almost full scholarships because of merit and the parents thought of it like a financial windfall. Others went to college on full athletic scholarships (but some of those were lost due to injury, etc.) and again, money was saved or diverted. Many families lost money the last few years and have to re-group. Again, what you have now is what they use, but it’s not always “fair”.
State schools can be cheaper but not always…ours is almost 20.000 a year and with aid, some private colleges beat that. You never know.</p>