“I understand that I have lived a blessed life and I really am grateful for it but it’s disappointing to see kids who can pick any school without a thought about how much debt their family will incur while I have to “be realistic” as you said and limit myself.”
I think you are feeling a little sorry for yourself when the reality is that MOST students cannot afford to pay full costs to colleges, whether to Yale or to the local college. Many many students fall into the donut hole of family making too much for need based aid and yet not having cash on hand to pay for school.
You’ll read stories on CC of kids getting full tuition but the family still needing $20k for other costs (travel, r&b, books, internships). I have one daughter who is lucky to have most of her full costs paid, but it is a combination of 7 sources of funding including merit, athletic, state grant, Bright Futures, two school grants, a pell grant, and I got the AOTC. Her sister had 6 sources of aid, and yet came no where near to meeting her COA. Two kids, same family, same financial situation, but just different at different schools. The daughter will full costs met could have gone to a much higher ranked school, but it wouldn’t have been better for her and would have cost me a lot more.
You have to make it work for your situation. There just aren’t that many kids going to Harvard or Yale for free Most families are paying a fairly large portion of their family income to go.