Should I apply to "match" schools?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I know for sure that my safety school is UConn, and I have a list of reaches (Yale, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Cornell, and Darthmouth). But for match schools I'm feeling a little conflicted, for several reasons. The main issue is that I am almost definitely going to need graduate school in order to get a career in all of the things I'm interested in. Therefore, I need to go to a school that is respected enough to have a good reputation, but simultaneously is a place that I will be able to have a respectable GPA while still having a social life (by social life I mean chatting with friends and being in a club, not partying all the time, as that's not exactly my thing).
Additionally, the school has to have stellar financial aid. Most of the colleges on my safety and reach lists seem to offer good financial aid to those accepted (UConn because I'm an in-state salutatorian or possibly valedictorian and thus will probably receive a big scholarship), but I can't seem to find any 'match' schools that have really good financial aid.
My mom makes slightly less than 100,000 a year (she's a widow) and has decent savings and no debt. I have a brother in college, as well. A match school for me would probably be somewhere about as difficult to get into as Colgate, maybe a little harder or less hard. I really want to find schools that offer financial aid that would bring their price for me down to 20,000 a year or less, which I know sounds crazy, but that's what my mom can afford (schools that match 100% are not good enough, somehow, as FAFSA calculates my mom's ability to pay at 36,000 a year, which she CANNOT afford). Please help! What colleges at a Colgate-y level have huge endowments?</p>

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<p>Pretty much just HYPS have those kind of endowments and are that generous. Another option is to look at schools where you would get good merit aid.</p>

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