My point was to say it does not ‘suck’ . You want it all, a free education and for that education to come from a top school. You are whining that the top school hasn’t given you money, and other very good schools have given you a good deal of money, but you aren’t assured that you’ll be doing great research as an 18 year old. Really? You don’t feel you’d be challenged at USC or GW? Why did you even apply? Not every student going to Cornell is doing research a month after arriving. Some students at USC or GW or even West Texas State may be working in a lab on day one.
We can’t decide for you. Only you, and your paying parents, can decide if it is better to go to USC at half price or Cornell at almost full price. I can tell you that my child would be feeling the love of Rose-Hulman (why did you apply to schools you don’t want to go to? I never understand that).
If you want help from parents with a real decision, post on the parent forum. You don’t want our opinions, which are to consider the money side.
Your parents and every other parent on this board…
This is very typical. A student gets accepted to schools with a range of price tags and wants to go to the most expensive, but the parents have other expenses and can’t or won’t pay for the student’s fave. The options are to convince the parents to come up with more money or enroll in a less expensive school.
Not many student have the luxury for their parents to help with grad school. Grad school cost is typically on the student loans or securing a funded program. So I think you should respect that you need to compromise on the cost and give them a break or fund your own grad/professional school. You have a good variety of choices. What is your title even asking? We don’t have money to give you. As a student, with access to US resources you could have been applying to scholarships beginning last fall. So you didn’t earn any I don’t think you earned the expensive college. Especially you have really good options that gave good chunks of money. That you are getting any need aid at all indicates that you will really be stretching the parent resources to make them pay the most expensive.