@liska21 I really appreciate your insight here and that of everyone else! I’m going through the exact same things right now for DD!. She has been in private school for years and has a sister who is as well but we are barely full pay and will be the same in college. She has an incredibly strong background and will do well at any college so I’m glad we’ve been able to give her that gift, but it does make saving for college hard.
Sadly I heard back from Oberlin today and they don’t see her as a candidate for merit aid in ED1 so I told DD we may rethink things. She does really want to go ED and loves Oberlin but I’m not sure we want to pay full boat. She really likes all of her other choices and is the type of kid who would be happy at many places so we may take our chances with RD. She is also a double legacy at another top LAC and likely to be accepted there (great NESCAC school in Maine) so I may urge her to wait and see if Oberlin takes her RD with money. I saw on their RD thread from last year that they even offered merit money to people they took off the wait list so it’s frustrating to me that they wouldn’t offer something for a strong candidate who is willing to commit now (and who is a URM).
Anyhow, we are not sure what we will do but need to decide within the next two weeks.