@sbdad12 UVA, William and Mary, Virginia Tech(engineering in particular), can be very tough admits these days . Stats can be misleading, as there is some self selection with instate students. A 3.5 , 1300 student , without very good EC’s, for instance, is unlikely to even apply to UVA. It is a wasted application. JMU numbers also seem to be going up. We have very good public universities in Virginia, and OOS families are also applying in large numbers.
@sevmom, definitely aware of the difficulty of UVA (rejected myself as an OOS student years ago), but if her daughter is applying to UVA as a reach, why not the other two as well, which I believe are less difficult for admission than UVA in state?
I think she said her daughter has a 3.9 UW/4.42 W GPA. Even with a 1300 SAT which is somewhere between the 25th-50th percentile, that’s a pretty good GPA, with 8 APs, and being a volleyball player.
@SBDad For some reason she is not crazy about VTech and W&M campuses and location. I think she is crazy and she likes JMU so much better. I agree that it would be practical for her to apply to those very good schools. Right now she has dreams of “going away” for college just like mom and dad did. It’s a balance of allowing her to follow her dreams and make practical decisions. After all, college is so expensive now compared to when my husband and I went so choices are more limited due to cost.
Have her apply to VT and W&M or other in-state schools. Come March it’s better to have more options than less. You can always decline but you can’t get an application do-over.
Covid has changed many things with schools and jobs. It could be the same next year.
S20 had a really nice offer from SMU’s business school. We pulled a parents choice to decline. Too far. His options were limited to schools we could drive to in a day. Just-in-case the school shut down, kicked students off campus, or he got sick. Not an insignificant possibility these days. It stinks but that’s just the reality today.
My kids went to VT and UVA. VT is large but manageable. Have you done a tour there? It is definitely further from northern Virginia than JMU, in terms of having to drive and also not in a big city. Blacksburg is charming, but like any school, VT is not for everyone . JMU is a great school and my VT kid’s second choice. Neither kid was interested in W & M but it is a great school if the fit is there. Instate cost though is over $30,000 all in these days.
And yes, being within driving distance can be a good thing these days. The vast majority of kids still were going to colleges within driving distance, even before the pandemic.
We had a similar budget, similar GPA and a ACT of 34. The only schools that were comfortably affordable without federal loans (and even had money left over for study abroad, sororities, trips, lower paid internships etc) :
Alabama, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Miami OH, Arizona, In State School, Maine (tuition match).
At the absolutely max of our budget with fed loans included:
Susquehanna, Wooster, Ursinus, Juniata, Denison.
South Carolina and Alabama in particular have large OOS populations including many from northern and mid Atlantic states and neither felt especially southern to us. D’s current apartment mates are from FL, CA, NY. D is graduating in 3 years and using final lot of money towards grad school.
@chmcnm that is a good point and I will have her add at least one (if not) more in-state option
@sevmom we haven’t done an official tour but we have walked or driven through CNU, VCU, VT, W&M, UVA, JMU (volleyball has allowed us to tour so many campuses all over the nation)
@CollegeMamb0 thank you for that info is super helpful
@stacysmom21 My VT kid played club volleyball for Virginia Tech. He was an all state player in high school… She might like club volleyball in college if she is not recruited or doesn’t want the time commitment of a D 1 school. Club is also a time commitment, with travel involved, but less so than the NCAA team. Good luck!
@sevmom yes she is planning to join a club wherever she goes! Thats cool your son played. Not many boy vb teams in this area. I am from Puerto Rico (Cuban parents) where vb is huge and our boys volleyball team were the stars at our school - much like the football players here. It is our main Fall sport (no football there).
A couple ideas…
Apply to all her instate options. A lot can change between now and April. Seriously.
There aren’t any awesome/cool schools that give massive merit aid, so she needs to be reasonable.
Check out a few Southern schools like Bama. I know what she says, but if she wants to go out of state those are great options. The Cal schools are not options.
Check out U of New Mexico. Great school for the money.
You need to think though the logistics of getting her to and from a west cost school during COVID.
Yes, volleyball is a great sport and fun to watch. H, both sons all played. H and VT son still play and Virginia Tech son is in late 20’s. FDIL played four years on a Patriot League team. Great, long term sport if you like staying fit. Lots of rec and competitive leagues out there as you age. That’s my plug for volleyeball ! 
We love it!
Check out UNM and Texas Tech. Both should get you down to the price you want. We live in Albq, and UNM is our flagship. Because this is a small place, our kids want to get out of town, but UNM is known for great mentorship, undergrad research, and its honors program. It looks like your D would get a scholarship and be eligible for in-state tuition. We know plenty of kids who’ve gone there, and then to Med school, if that’s her path. A friend has one at Boulder and one at UNM and says the advising at UNM is far superior.
Texas Tech is another school kids from here head to. It looks like she’d get a similar deal there.
Most of those mentioned won’t get you down to 25k. UW, UC’s, Oregon are all expensive OOS schools. Cal Poly is a cheaper one, but still over 40k. No way will Tulane or Case Merit get you down to that either (unless she applies for and gets one of Tulane’s named competitive scholarships).
@havenoidea thank you for the extra info on UNM. We will look at it and Texas Tech. At firs I thought she would qualify for scholarships at UO but i guess those listed on their website are very selective / slim chance of getting one.
@stacysmom21 For the most part, West Coast state flagships tend to be competitive OOS for admission and have a lack of scholarships due to a high demand for these schoools coupled with a lack of funding to offer them to OOS students (most notably the UCs and Cal Poly SLO, though UW does offer some merit scholarships to OOS, though the majority of full-tuition ones are for in-state.)
Per the University of Oregon’s scholarship website (https://financialaid.uoregon.edu/scholarships_freshmen) students with a 1250+ACT & 3.8+ GPA can receive 10K per year under the Summit Scholarship (the admissions website seems to indicate this as automatic as long as you apply by January 15th w/transcripts etc,) bringing the COA to 40K per the UO website. 
There are also some general university scholarships for a few thousand dollars that are not renewable but can be applied to every year.
If your daughter is interested in living on the West Coast, Portland State University (rolling admission, but has a February deadline for scholarships) is a public university that provides scholarships to Out of State students and is less competitive admissions-wise than Oregon’s flagships (which are different from California and Washington on the West coast given that they are not located in the state’s largest city, Portland, unlike UW and the UCs.) If your daughter is interested in Biology AND Public Health as I was, the Oregon Health and Science University is a top 30 medical school in the nation (out of ~200 medical schools,) and its school of public health runs the PSU-OHSU School of Public Health for undergraduate/graduate students.
Here’s PSU’s scholarship: https://www.pdx.edu/student-finance/out-of-state-opportunity-scholarship (only for non-WICHE recipients, which is only for the West coast.) It comes to max 10K, which still makes the COA ~40K, but I believe there are some departmental scholarships that can be applied for/Honors college etc.
There are also a variety of private universities in the city that offer merit scholarships, such as Lewis and Clark College (apply Early Action here!,) which offers partial tuition scholarships (and 5 freshmen every year a full-tuition, though this is extremely competitive.)
Thank you @PikachuRocks15 - good to know about these schools that were not in our radar.
Any California school that would offer reputable biology/biochem programs and can put us at the $25K COA range? Any?
OP- your finance are your business, but I’m finding the financial story here a little hard to follow given that you’ve got some schools on the list which definitely will not fall into your budgeted range.
My suggestion as painful as it is- schedule a “finances night” with your spouse. Review last three years tax returns, checkbook statements (or recurring expenses), IRA/401k statements, 529 statements. Get an absolutely granular number down which represents “this is what we can pay”, add your D’s federal loan to it, and that’s the budget. She gets a job? Terrific- that pays for plane tickets home or books and pizza/lattes-- but unlike when we were kids, it will NOT change your budget in a meaningful way.
I know too many families where the budget was 40K but even with a terrific merit award, the cost was 50K, not including transportation. Then what? Or families where the budget was 20K (including the federal loan) and the kid got the fancy-shmancy “named” award which “only” left 30K to pay and how do you say no after flying out for an interview weekend and being wined and dined?
Get a number. That’s her budget. I cannot imagine some of the suggested options making any sense for your family. And the huge awards are going to be HARDER to get with Covid, score choice, etc. not easier. I remember back in 2009 when some fantastic colleges which used to hand out merit like candy AND had a dozen huge awards went to “here you get 5K” in merit and one huge award. That’s what the last recession brought- and I see no evidence that this one will be different.
And also, you seem to have younger kid(s). . You are setting a precedent with how you handle finances, budget, choices, for your first child. Cross country plane trips, hotels, can add up, so that should be factored into the budget as well.
In your first post, you said you will not be taking any loans. Does this include your daughter too? Most schools that aren’t offering a full ride expect the students to take the federal direct loans and include them in the financial aid package.
I was very against my kids taking the loans too, but after freshman year they had to. One only had to take the subsidized loans but the other had to take the full amount.
Now their are plenty of schools where $25k per year will pay the entire COA, but they aren’t on the coasts.
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Hi @blossom there is no financial story here. We are new to this process and we are trying to understand if she will qualify for merit and where. That was the reason for my post and joining CC. I’m learning a lot in the process like for example, 1) about schools that offer automatic scholarships, 2) or that there is no chance for oos merit at the UC’s 3) or about the VPA requirements for UC, etc etc. That is all new to us and grateful for learning that here at CC before we go on wasting our time applying. Our list is changing with every new thing i learn.
To further clarify- $25K is ‘about’ what we are willing to spend on college. We will not qualify for any need whatsoever - only 1 kid in college, income and assets too high. We will be paying in full without taking any debt. Most of it will come from their 529 which we’ve had since they were born (I have 2 D’s - D21 & D25 perfectly spaced for 8 yrs of continued college tuition). Can we afford more? Yes. Do we think it’s necessary in order to obtain a quality education? No. Will we allow her to take any loans? No. Are we willing to spend an extra $5-10K if it was absolutely the right fit? Maybe and we could still do so with no debt. We are just very fiscally conservative people that are not willing to set up our children to have any debt or drain our savings.
Our D21 is smart and hears what we are saying but as a typical teen, she still has hopes and dreams. We are guiding her in this process and while she won’t like some of the things we have to say now, in the end we know she will appreciate where we are coming from. The advice here has been extremely valuable.