Feeling so lost

[O2BonCC]

I apologize if I missed it but I’m surprised no one has referred the OP to this thread:

Looking for advice in Merit aid for a top 1% student

I’m sure this will come as a shock to a lot of people here but college is ridiculously expensive (yes, I’m sarcastic by nature). My daughter is graduating in 2020, and we are looking for schools to apply to, with the concern not being which colleges she will get accepted to, but instead which colleges we can afford. Most college calculators tell us our EFC is anywhere form $30K to 40K per year, which is about 1/3 of our after tax income and more than double our annual mortgage payment. There’s no way we can afford that, and there’s no way we’re taking out loans and mortgaging our (or our daughter’s) future to cover that cost. We need that number to be around $15K. Fortunately, it looks like our daughter will qualify for merit aid, so we are targeting schools with generous merit aid that also have great engineering programs (right now she’s looking to major in Chemical Engineering). I’m hoping to get advice from folks who have gotten merit aid and/or can offer suggestions on schoo…

(not sure if that will translate correctly, but search the site for “advice in merit aid”, and the poster’s name starts with “Kevin”)

I know all kids are different, but seems like there are a lot of similarities here.