<p>I was the one who steered you over from the financial board. As with the other board, you will find a wealth of information here, but it does take time to digest it all. Whether your D will get into Emory or Michigan is rather like asking whether it's a good time to buy bonds. You will always have someone ask you about your asset allocation and someone lecture about the evils of market timing and then tell you to go read Rick Ferri. In other words, before you get to that question, you need a bit of background about colleges, costs, kids motivations, safety schools, reach schools, merit aid, small liberal arts colleges vs large universities---the whole application process. There are a lot of books about applying to college and this board is an excellent, if somewhat disorganized, source of knowledge. You are thinking of spending a lot of money, so it might be good to research Emory or Michigan or Barnard or any of the other places your D has mentioned and have discussions with her about why she wants to go to those schools and what she wants out of school in general. Not to put the kids down, but many of them want to just get away to a place that sounds good to them or their friends, or that is in a city that sounds cool. I was that way at 17. If you try pin them down to valid whys, they have a hard time. It is important that they think through their choices to make sure that the school is right for them. It might be a good idea to really review with your daughter why these schools are good for her, and why they are better then her in-state options. One of the attitudes we tried to maintain with our daughter in all of this was one of partnership. We wanted her to find the best place for her with a reasonable financial outlay from us. It was never you can't go here or there. It was more, this is what we can do and we will try to help you to the best of our abilities to get you there if you give us good reason. And in the end we're all pretty happy about the place she chose.</p>