YOU won’t be able to fund your college education through loans…because YOU have limited loans you can take in your name only. For freshman year, you can get $5500. Beyond that…you will need a cosigner…one of your parents. Or your parents would need to take the loans themselves.
So…put funding college solely with loans you get right out of your head…because that can’t happen.
“Decent merit” doesn’t mean much if the net cost is still high. A person can get a $25k per year merit to a private university and still have $20k-40k per year to pay, which you can’t pay.