I wish I could have that same fearless attitude towards finances. Maybe it’s because I’m an older parent so I don’t have so much time before retirement; actually I will be retirement age when my younger child enters college. DH and I can’t just take a second mortgage on the house. I will assume that you can afford upwards of $70,000 a year for each child or your child is one of the few who are high achievers able to attend a top university. Good need-based aid is not often available to the usual high school senior - most colleges do NOT give out a lot of need-based aid. Only about 60 schools report they will meet full financial need (by their definition).
I would think that you’d go with the one your kid likes best/loves AND is still affordable.
For me, personally, I want my own D to stay within an earlier proposed budget. One of her schools is offering half-tuition scholarship. It will be the cheapest option. She happens to really like the school after visiting. But… the other schools being considered will also fall within the proposed budget. So we are letting her choose.
I think other factors should be considered too - For instance, D’s half-tuition school, she’d come in at the very top of the class, apparently. Will she be comfortable with that? Will that hinder her being academically challenged there? Or will it make it easier for her to learn and grow, since it may be a more relaxed and less competitive atmosphere?
This is one of the questions I have, anyway… I’m leaning toward thinking she will have a comfortable space to learn and grow… But each kid is different. My kid’s clearly a type B person. A competitive, energetic Type A student may not be happy being at the top of the heap…
Back in 2006 son could go to Ivy at $200,000 total cost or go to Penn State Schreyers for free with all sorts of perks. CC mantra at the time was go to the highest ranking college you can. He chose Penn State. Thank goodness because 2008 rolled around and the recession started.
He got into a top 10 paid grad school in his field so it did not hurt him. He left that with other passions and went to work. He is just finishing up a masters at a top school in his field paid for by his company.
So he got a great education for absolutely free and H retired at 59.
Worked for us.
If you and your child have done a proper job in researching schools and selecting which ones to apply to, they should have a range of options that they would be happy to attend. I don’t understand why anyone would be applying to ‘safety’ schools that they have no desire to attend.
We were pretty much in the same position as InigoMontoya’s post above. We are stretching to pay as much as possible but there is a limit based on other household expenses, retirement, etc. I compiled a spreadsheet for each of our two children as their offers came in so they knew what their students loans would be for each school. There were highly-ranked schools that came in above budget and that both parents and child agreed were off the table. Both had multiple offers within a range that we all agreed was reasonable and made their choices from there. In the end, both chose an in-state university honors college for the same reason - they felt like the school did the best job of making them feel wanted and offered more personalized resources within a larger university environment.
@sax, Schreyer is as prestigious as most of the Ivies (and nearly as difficult to gain admission to), but it certainly isn’t free anymore. IF your student can get admitted as a freshman, he receives a $4,500 scholarship for eight semesters. Admitted as a sophomore? No discount whatsoever.
Penn State Schreyer is an excellent value if you can afford $25,000 - $30,000+ a year in-state, but that’s still a lot of money for many families.
@JayDee12, sometimes there really aren’t any safeties a kid is excited about, but you still have to have them. My son originally had no desire to attend either of his safeties, but in the end he took the time to really evaluate them and is happily attending one of them now.
When he was applying to colleges in 2006 they all had a great deal of money. He was awarded the Braddock Scholarship (science) which was full boat ++ at that time. Even that award has been decreased since the recession .
Point was that his safety worked just fine for him even though fit didn’t seem right at the time because of the size. As we all know schools get “smaller” the longer you are there.
You clearly raised a smart kid, @sax! 
We’re fortunate in that we could be looking at 5k per year beyond what we have saved being the most expensive option. If that’s how it turns out it’s completely up to S16 what he wants to do. S18, while brighter than his brother in some areas, doesn’t test as well; he’s more of a top 10 or 15 percent tester. Finding something affordable will probablybe a little tougher with him.
Thanks but cant take credit. He was born smart and somehow we managed not to screw him up 
After all this time, I believe it is the parents and their social connections and wealth that help set up many of the kids at Ivy colleges and in future careers. I don’t believe it is the college experience itself.
That has been my observation as well. I have seen students who used family and social connections to excel at Ivies and other highly-ranked colleges and success in post-college life. I’ve also seen others who have attended state flagships and other solid public universities and use those as a launching pad to thrive in their careers. It really is all about making the best of your particular circumstances.
We were fortunate to be able to save (and invest) and get some help from my parents that cost never was an issue in my two kids’ college selection. True, one of them has some NMS money (a token amount), but our promise to the kids was get into the best school you can that fits your interests and needs, and we’ll figure out how to pay for it; just finish in 4 years, and you have to contribute to your incidental costs (books and entertainment) by working in summer or school year.
Obviously, students with good connections may have job and internship opportunities that are not available to their classmates.
But I don’t see how family and social connections would help a student to “excel at Ivies and other highly-ranked colleges.” It’s not as though the professor looks up your alumni connections before grading your exam.
Actually @JayDee12 and @sax, I think very very few students get accepted to Ivies and/or excel there due to parents’ wealth&connections. That belittles the achievements of some outstanding students. Please explain what you are referring to. As for first jobs, it is conceivable that some kids benefit from parents’ connections, but that would apply graduates of all schools.
@bordertexan - Thank you.
In fact, she has been max’ing out her Roth IRA contribution every year since sophomore year (working as a research assistance during undergrad).
https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/3801/wanted-smart-students-from-poor-families
Won’t highjack the thread but lets start with Yales own discussion
@MostlyDolores
“I guess my question is more along the lines of – how do you convince yourself that it’s ok to spend 40k more on something based mostly on a very subjective idea of where you will be happier when the choices are objectively very similar?”
Hey Dolores if you’re still here, I think you answered your question. The 3 schools are objectively very similar, she likes the cheapest, she said she’ll be happy there, and you will save $40K. The correct answer is “Go there” because you cannot and should not justify blowing $40K on a subjective sense of what school might be a better fit – especially since in this case “better fit” seems to revolve mostly around subjective criteria which may or may not conform to reality.
I know you want the best for your D but you might be overthinking this and stressing about possibly missing the “best” choice for her. Save your money, send her to the objectively very similar least-expensive school, don’t have any regrets or second-guess yourself, and sit back while she succeeds and has a great time in the process.
I see things differently: a contract was made, that the daughter can apply to colleges within x budget and the parents would pay what amount they established as the budget. The daughter found several colleges that were within budget. Within that budget, not all cost the same, but presumably they’re not the same either. She created possibilities within the parameters given by her parents. She respected what they said and now, it’s her choice to make.
Unless something’s happened (loss of job, accident), changing the parameters now is breaking the contract and telling your kid your word is worthless.
I keep my word and it’d be unthinkable for me to break it. My child’s trust is important to me and I know that broken trust may never get repaired. Further, I wouldn’t forgive myself if I betrayed a word given to my child. It’s worth way more to me than the $40K I do have and set aside for her education anyway (and that OP does have as per the first post).
Therefore, I would let her choose - whether she chooses the most expensive or the least expensive, as long as it’s within budget, it’s all fine, because I said it was and I don’t go back on my word.
So, to me, the question is, what worth do you put in your word, in a promise you made, and in your child’s trust? Is is worth saving money you do have?
Unless you explicitly promised your child a specific amount, I think the idea of a contract, with no more parental input is really way beyond what I am willing to do.
What I am promising my children is that I will, as possible (so excluding job loss, etc), provide them with a good education. If they earn a great scholarship, I assume that they will allow me to help trade cost vs value vs “best choice” and we can have a family discussion with said adult child (who are 18 at time of this discussion).
Who locks themselves into things like this? Let’s say you like a car, because it is a good value, but a competitor offers a $5K rebate out of the blue. Do you not reassess both cars with new financial inputs?
What could be possibly unfair to a child is if you unequivocally state that you will pay for an Ivy League school at $70K and then get cold feet and send them to a flagship U at less than half that cost. Then again, per my premise, they are still getting a good to very good education. Debt free. Since I would never promise that, I wouldn’t be not keeping my word … but if you tend to grandiose statements, maybe give yourself some wiggle room.
I guess if your EFC is low enough to eliminate a $35K difference, that may make the situation have less impact on your family, including mom and dad, retirement, other kids, possible graduate school plans, etc.
But there is no way I am going to preclude making a decision that I am not paying $35K more because Dx thinks that school X is nicer on a one day visit than school Y.
^So, essentially, you tell your kid “I’ll pay 35k, but if a lower-ranked/not-as-good-a-fit school costs 17K that’s where you’re going”. Or you say “I’ll pay 35K but if a school that’s as good a fit and will make your goals possible is available for cheaper, that’s where you’re going.”
You don’t tell your kid “we’ll pay up to 35k, find a college within our budget” if you don’t mean it. It’s just cruel.
Note that I realize that some kids are fickle or don’t work hard, but we have no information that the colleges were chosen because of a half day on campus at some point.
(Also, in OP’s case, we’re talking a 10K difference, not a 35K difference, that the OP said they had and had explicitely made available for college.)
If I like a car and told myself I’d go up to X amount, and I like a car that costs X-4, no problem. That’s a better value - what I want for a cheaper price.
But if I can buy a car I like why would I buy a car I like less (because it doesn’t have what I want/need)? I’ve actually done it once and it was a bad deal all around - some downsides didn’t make the purchase as worthy to me and I’d have been better off with the slightly more expensive car that I could afford and that had the feature I needed. Frankly it was a BAD decision on my part. You know, penny wise pound foolish and all that. Some things are worth the cost. Cheaper isn’t always the best deal. Again if you have the money for them.
I know a kid whose father had told her to work for a top 10 university and he’d pay if she got in (they definitely had the money and wouldn’t be missing anything, the father clearly said so - we’re talking a family where everyone has a top-end car, plus a yacht, plus a winter chalet and a summer house, etc.). Being careful, the daughter also applied to several safeties and got a full ride to one. Needless to say, when the father pulled the Top 10 offer because there was a free ride, things didn’t go well. I don’t think the daughter will ever forgive her father actually because she worked very, very hard for 4 years to fulfill her end of the deal, she got it done, and then her father backtracked; she had to attend a decent but not spectacular school, that was not as great a fit, because her father didn’t fulfill his end of the deal (or lied to her during 4 years, whichever way you want to look at it.)
@MYOS1634
the OP says absolutely nothing about a contract or even any sort of promise to her D. all she says is she set a budget at the beginning of the process. she says the 2 pricier schools are doable within that budget, but the extra $40K they would cost is not a negligible amount. it seems they can manage the extra 40K but not without some measure of financial concern or strain.
a budget isn’t a pledge, it’s just the highest amount you can spend for something. if i budget X amount of dollars for a car and find one i want for half that, i’m going to buy it and be happy i found a great deal. i’m certainly not going to keep shopping until i find one that costs my whole budget.
it sounds like they began by setting an upper $ limit, found 2 schools that hit that limit, and one that is $10K/yr cheaper. she likes all 3 and would be happy at any of them. Mom has a subjective sense that one or both of the upper 2 might be a better fit (whatever “better fit” means in this case) but explicitly says that all 3 are objectively similar. I just wouldn’t spend $40K on warm fuzzies or feelings.
i don’t know, it just seems like you’re reading it as “we promised to pay this amount and now we’re backing out of it” while I read it as, “we can manage up to this amount even though it may be a stretch, so let’s do our research and discuss our options.” i’m just not going to criticize OP for breaking her word, contract, or promise when it doesn’t seem like there was any made in the first place
oh and the guy who backed out of the Top 10 offer was a jerk, but it does not apply to OP’s situation