I agree with Pitt… it’s a great school. Check the application… it opens earlier than the commonapp ( maybe July?).
It’s not crazy. And she might love those full ride schools.
My son has had a fantastic experience at UCF…pre-med. Great student advising, very personalized support for the med school application process. Rigorous classes but supportive profs. Tons of opportunities to get involved. I’ve been pleased with the education he’s received. He’s loved it.
You are not crazy. You are practical and responsible. Your daughter will have great opportunities and choices as a NMF. We are in a similar financial boat as you. Our S18 is not NMF but he does have high stats and we have had to narrow his choices down to ones that award merit and make our cost <$10,000 per year. Thankfully he is practical and responsible too so he is completely on board. My D20 will be a harder sell 
@FrozenMaineMom I can only share my personal experience. According to my balance sheet I could afford to send my children to any school, but in realty money always seems to be tight. Part of this is priorities; we take the children to Europe every year at least once, for example, although we travel cheaply.
My son had a 35 ACT, 4.28/3.94 g.p.a., and was ranked 7th out of 271 students. He only applied to and was accepted to four colleges. He could have gone to Ole Miss (where we live) on almost a full ride, to Alabama tuition-free, to Georgia at in-state rates with a $3,000 scholarship, or to Tulane for a little more than $20,000 a year in tuition ($32,000 annual scholarship). In my opinion, Tulane was the best fit, but we just decided we couldn’t justify the money. He ruled out Ole Miss because we live here. In my opinion Georgia is a better school than Alabama, but it would have cost us an additional $9,000 per year.
In the end we decided on Alabama, with the understanding that I would be more generous with spending money if he made that choice, but that I would try to make any of his choices happen. He has been very happy, and is active in both his fraternity and in student government. Alabama’s four-year scholarship includes grad school, which few colleges do, and that was a factor, since he started college with 67 hours. After all is said and done I think skipping Tulane was the right choice. I sometimes wonder about Georgia. But he is happy and we are spending less money, which makes us happy. And there seems to be no shortage of firms wanting to have him for an internship this summer.
It is possible to limit grad studies to funded programs though that won’t happen with med school.
The ideas about what is sufficient income to pay for college certainly varies widely on this forum.
I would still check the calculators on sites (and include debt), and seek merit aid, to widen choices, though the in-state option is a good one.
“She shouldn’t waste 4 years of her life by going to subpar schools.”
As I’ve said many times, rigor matters, but I have a niggling suspicion that isn’t what you have in mind because rigor can be found by a driven smart student in many places (including many where a top student can get full-tuition/ride scholarships). As others have pointed out, OU is known for meteorology, UT-Dallas for CS, UA-Huntsville for engineering, UMinny for chemical engineering/econ, 'Zona has several top programs and I haven’t heard of research U’s trying to keep top undergrads who are qualified to take grad classes from taking those classes if there is space (and often there are in those departments that are highly ranked for their PhD program).
@collegedad13, online would be terrible for lab classes, which would be required for a pre-med.
You seem offended that the OP is trying to help her D meet her goals in life while keeping within the financial constraints/plan they have.
As an aside, it amazes me that people can not believe that families who don’t qualify for fin aid may have financial constraints. I don’t know the specifics of the OP’s situation and don’t really care, but I know families with a mentally/physically disabled child who have to put a huge portion of their family income to that child’s care. Is “has disabled child” a checkbox on any college’s fin aid form?
@Veryapparent “Definitely the full ride! University of Alabama? I know several friends from New England sending their kids there.”
How is Alabama still only #110 on US News if so many super smart kids are headed there for so many years? I think I heard over half the U is OOS kids now.
@lizzy1234, because adding some tippy-top students barely affect the US News rankings at all. You’d have to fill down to the 75th percentile to affect the test score measures USNews cares about at all (and 'Bama, like most state flagships, is big, so that’s 7K students). They wouldn’t affect hardly any other component in the USNews ranking methodology.
Visit the school and see. It’s a very nice campus, one of the best we’ve visited. People are friendly. New construction everywhere. They actively recruit top kids. Ranking is hurt by being a state school with a high acceptance rate, obligations, etc. It seems like a great place to go for a full college experience.
It may not be a checkbox, but there are colleges that will work with a family in that situation. If you have special circumstances, especially related to health of a family member, it can be beneficial to document this outside the FA forms for the FA office at colleges. I’m not saying there are any guarantees, and I wouldn’t count on it as a strategy, but sometimes some schools will adjust.
I do think the “subpar” school comment was uncalled for. I think the schools with generous NMF scholarships are a decent opportunity for a family with no savings and who feel they have other immovable commitments for their current cashflow.
Thank you, @intparent. I was just going to post about special circumstances. You can absolutely talk about extraneous costs on financial aid forms, both the FAFSA and the CSS Profile. And schools do really want to hear about the “special needs child”, and will take those extra costs into consideration.
I’ve worked with several students whose families have a lot of extra medical costs for special needs children, and from the financial aid packages I’ve seen, schools did make allowances.
It pays to be up front about finances and if necessary, appeal a financial aid package. We appealed for the first two years that my eldest son was at MIT, and we received more assistance. I appealed to most colleges when my middle son applied to college because of a change in finances, and all the schools to which we appealed came back with more money.
Subpar? My middle son got into an Ivy League, even attended said school. He would have been so much happier at UAH, a “subpar” school by some on CC. He loved it when he visited, but didn’t attend because he needed a gap year at the time.
Definitely consider most/all the schools that have full tuition/full ride scholarships, OP.
Didn’t OP mention something about outside forces bring at play here. She didn’t ask for hindsight lessons, she asked for advice on her current situation. Her daughter earned NMF and should go for free somewhere in my opinion.
http://medicine.tufts.edu/Admissions/Special-Admissions-Options/Early-Assurance-Program/Eligibility
Greetings @FrozenMaineMom, another Maine mother here (though we aren’t living there year right now). Since your daughter currently thinks she wants to go to medical school, I wondered if you had heard of this admissions process at Tufts Medical School that has a Maine Track. Results in early admission and deletes MCAT requirement in the process. Some UMaine students have been admitted to med scool though this program. UMaine also has a very old well respected Honors College with a pretty cool old Honors College dorm. UMaine is a great option, I belive full tuition for NMF. Like you, I loved my time at UMaine.
I’m a big believer in “blooming where you’re planted.”
Your daughter has been very successful in high school; there’s no reason to think she won’t have a fabulous college career anywhere-- including those Full Ride schools.
I agree. The qualities that made her thrive in HS are the same qualities that will make her thrive in college… whatever school it is.
I think it is important to think about whether you are buying the experience of college, or the outcome of college. Many of these posts are focused on outcome.
I was strongly in favor of our state U. for one of our kids, who also got into an Ivy. At that time this particular Ivy didn’t have the kind of aid that Harvard or Yale has, or Amherst for that matter. He is a CS student and the state U has a great program.
However, I would say that attendance at the Ivy, which was his choice and for which he paid a portion, was life-changing.
Our income is miniscule compared to what some on this forum are discussing. But we did take the chance, and the connections he made enabled him to get internships in the summer that were highly paid. He ended up with a $10k loan that he paid off after graduating.
He loooooved his college experience. Of course my original hope for him, the state U., would have been find and he may have simply ended up with a job with a different set of people. But he says attending his college was the best decision he could ever make.
I think that both the experience… and the outcome… are important. Many schools have both and I do think this applies to the OP’s possibilities.
Here’s the thing though- nobody can predict either experience OR outcome with any degree of precision.
Kid A is a stellar student. But the parents have provided a TON of support throughout HS which they don’t even realize goes above and beyond what is typical. Kid has never run a load of laundry or prepared dinner or vacuumed the living room, made a doctor’s appointment, taken a city bus alone, extracted $20 from an ATM or bought a stamp at a post office. Parents pick up kid at school to drive to and from EC’s, provide a dinner which can be wolfed down in the car so that once they get home the evening is free to study. Kid leaves homework on the kitchen table? Someone drives it to school. Kid forgets a piece of sports equipment? Parent drives it over to practice.
Now for many of you this may sound trivial- but there are lots of A students who fall apart once they get to college. Doing laundry, getting to meals on time, managing the paperflow, talking to a dean or advisor without the helicopter parent to manage the discussion- these are all overwhelming. Even planning out how to/when to study for midterms- mom always prepared the schedule and made sure the kid was on track. Kid fell a little behind? That’s what tutors are for.
Kid B is a stellar student. But had zero social life in HS. Kid gets to college and is up until 3 am playing video games with the BFF, starts the weekend at 6 pm on Thursday (blowing off the Friday morning review session for Chem), spends most of the semester figuring out which frat to join.
Kid C is an average student but gets to college determined to focus. Ends up majoring in beer pong.
It would be nice if we all had a crystal ball, wouldn’t it?