My husband had my S apply to BC RD early because of the (extremely) slim chance he would get the full scholarship. My S is in only the 68th percentile of admitted students per Niche and we knew he wouldn’t get one, but he was planning to apply RD anyway and so BC moved up the priority list. Smart on their part I think to control the flow of applications and get an early look at a portion the RD applicant pool while they are evaluating ED. 8k other students apparently did this for 50 finalist spots. It’s a win win as they get to award 15 incredible students a full ride. They sent a very nicely worded letter when he didn’t make it as a finalist. 
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@sushiritto it’s surprising how everything is so close over there! LOL I’m too old to remember my geography. We planned it that way figuring we could only make one trip before May 1. S is into two pretty good schools over there with EA merit already but he also got into comparable ones over here. There are 4 reaches, 2 high targets, and 1 safety (but with honors college a must have) over there left to hear from. Mid-March Western public answers probably won’t change anything about the trip one way or the other.
It will be interesting to see if they can book hotels last minute. It’s so inexpensive right now.
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I think plane tickets and hotels will remain inexpensive for a while. You should be fine. We visited a bunch of Northeast schools with D18 and we flew into one of the big airports and were able to take the train pretty much everywhere. Obviously some locales we had to rent a car.
OTOH, D21 seems to think San Diego is REALLY far from our SF Bay Area location.
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SMU and other private schools in TX that are ranked lower than UT need to discount tuition if they want to attract top students that would normally attend higher ranked and cheaper UT.
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It kind of is!!
Last spring a self-described middle class Hispanic female on CC mentioned these options: UCLA, Boston College, UC Davis, UC Irvine (Regent’s Scholar and CHP), UCSD (Regent’s Scholar), Fordham (Full ride), LMU (Half Tuition), Pepperdine (Pepperdine Achievement Scholarship). Fordham and LMU are tied at #66 in this year’s US News national ranking and Pepperdine is #49. BC is #35. UCD is #39 while UCLA (20), UCI (35) and UCSD (35) are higher ranked.
I use that as one example of how universities in similar ranking brackets may offer different amounts of merit aid so it’s good to apply to a range of options. Some will focus resources on scholarships and others on buildings and programs while others on building their endowment. Specifically, SMU tries to offer enough merit based aid to be comparable to top in-state college costs. They have found that to be a prudent use of funds. Some colleges might compete with public colleges OOS costs. Note that with US News’ new focus on Pell Grant recipients, more colleges will move funds to support full coverage for Pell Grant eligible applicants.
Pell Grant reimbursement is currently up to $6,345 per year. It’s paid on a sliding scale with full coverage for families making less than $26K per year and no funds for families making $60K or more. If one’s family makes $110K per year (e.g., two teachers), they would make $50K more before taxes than the barely eligible Pell Grant recipient. Each family may have little savings but the $110K family likely lives in a better neighborhood with better schools than the $60K family or the $26K family.
In terms of resource allocation, this article
describes the merit aid arms race occurring even in public universities (e.g., Alabama, ASU, Temple, MSU and Arizona). “The very fact that total institutional aid spending has soared over these 17 years, from $2 billion in 2001 to $8.6 billion in 2017, shows that public universities have largely embraced the high-tuition, high-aid model of their private college counterparts.” It seems to bear out when the student I first described was getting public U offers at UCI and UCSD.
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SMU recognizes its competition with UT and since it enrolls ~60% of its students from OOS, it has competition with other state flagships like UCs, Florida, UIUC, etc. There’s also a big overlap with other privates that offer similar student resources.
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Average discount rate is now above 50% (2018 is the most recent data):
Also see here if you really want to play with private college discount data and trends:
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Is UW Wisconsin or Washington?
University of Washington, although UW Wisconsin is a solid engr school (especially chemical engineering)
Ha, it is far!
My daughter can fly from our home on the East Coast to San Diego in less time than it takes to drive between San Francisco and San Diego. And if you count door to door, including drive to/from both airports, it’s about the same. She went back to school last Thursday and door to door (plus she checked a bag), was only 7.5 hours! Of course, flying b/w San Francisco and San Diego is much faster than driving. I could drive from my home in Maryland all the way to Boston in the same time it takes driving b/w San Diego and San Francisco!
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I keep making that same argument to D21, but she has submitted no OOS apps to date.
Before her EA admission, I was trying, to no avail, to get her to submit an app to the UCE (Eugene) as an “in-state” safety. 
Heck, Disneyland and colleges in the same vicinity are far to her. 
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A lot of hotels have very generous cancellation policies due to COVID. We are thinking of booking now for April break as long as we can cancel without penalty.
My personal observation regarding BC. BC wasn’t always the BC the you know today. In my generation it had many local commuters and educated many first gen students before first gen was a recognized term. It was simply kids who went to college although their parents did not. Holy Cross was a more difficult admit then. Now those parents have done well for themselves financially and the kids have felt connected to the school since day one. The parents can afford to full pay and will happily full pay. For some it’s a stretch but they have been planning and are more than willing. The kids growing up in affluent areas have good stats and fit the profile. Between these families and others not so intimately connected to the school that also have money and good stats, I don’t think BC needs to give much merit aid to attract students. I suspect Villanova may be similar. If you have plenty of full pay high stat students, you don’t need to attract anyone with a tuition discount.
My family needs a tuition discount but the above is what I have seen.
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UCI and UCSD offer very little for their regents scholarships. I don’t believe they fit in with the high tuition/high aid model. They are more high tuition/low aid.
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On BC, my understanding is that the school would like to offer more generous aid to middle class families and has current development efforts underway to improve that. It is on the lower end for endowment etc of the list of 20-ish schools that are both need-blind and meet full need. Like the others in that list, they have intentionally committed to focusing on need-based aid rather than merit.
As for the days of commuter students, that was well prior to the 1980s. Most parents of current students are younger than the historical commuter time period (60s or early 70s, I think) and if they are alumni, they would have lived on campus. It’s interesting that alumni attachment/loyalty indeed might go back into the commuter era, which may indicate multigenerational attendance.
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@evergreen5 My husband, sister in law, and my best friend were all accepted to BC in the early 80’s as commuter students. All lived within 45 minutes of the school. None of them went because they all wanted the residential experience, but I think commuter students were pretty common even in the 80’s. I don’t think any of them would get into BC today with their high school stats.
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Maybe early 1980s? By the mid 1980s, housing was similar to today, albeit perhaps with a larger portion of the junior class living off campus, maybe 75% or something back then, vs maybe 50-60% today. Mid 1980s, freshman housing is exactly as it is now, with 40% of the class on Newton and 60% on Upper campus.
Stats-wise, yes, admission was easier back then, as was the case for most colleges. Plus, there was a greater variety of scholarships, combo merit/need, etc.
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Other than social science and humanities, I’m having my kids retake STEM and Calc again in college despite AP scores. It’s not the same as AP classes in high school.
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I think Southwest has generous cancellation policy (you get the credit). Most hotels can be canceled 24 hours within check-in time if you don’t buy advanced packages.