Ok, thanks everyone for chiming in.
First I’ll respond to the EFC thing. My meeting the EFC I meant meeting need, as in “You would need 20k of aid to come here if you contributed just your EFC, so here is 15”
Second, to @OspreyCV22 I could not disagree more strongly with you. Let’s pretend things didn’t get a little shaken up my freshman year and savings were still there, it still isn’t fair to ask parents (even over the course of 18 years) to save several times there annual income (especially for three kids). If you don’t think the price of a college education in America has spiraled out of control then I don’t know what to say to you. The high school job was the funniest bit. Let’s say I go to my in-state public with full pay. That’d be like 130k when it’s all said and done. Not sure how much of a dent my near-minimum wage high school job has put in that, but ok.
By the end of first semester my cumulative GPA is about a 3.58 weighted, and a 3.4something unweighted. I have a 1330 CR+M SAT, and my major will be biology.
What my dad told me is that he could contribute roughly 18k my freshman year, which would decrease as my siblings came into college as well. He is terrified of Parent Plus Loans (rightfully so) and so I’m not sure where the extra money will come from. I am very close to one of my aunts, and she’s always said she would help me with it, but I’ve never known how much she had in mind.
So there it is. I am still waiting to hear from Tulane and Lehigh who are both supposed to be generous with need-based aid, so we will see. If not, I am somewhat confident I could earn my way to merit scholarships at UCONN.