<p>Since the college matching search engines don’t search for estimated Cost of Attendance (COA), run them for colleges and universities where the tuition and fees are USD 15,000 or less. That would leave USD 15,000 (or more, depending on just exactly how low those tuition and fees actually are) for housing, food, books, transportation</p>
<p>Or apply to a school that will give you an assured good-sized merit scholarship so that your remaining costs are under $30k per year. There are schools that with your stats, would give you $10k or more per year for your stats.</p>
<p>Let me address a little bit of what you ask about: How do US families with financial resources similar to yours and with kids who want to attend prestigious expensive universities deal with this situation?</p>
<p>1) The State Flagship is the financial safety school for most academically high-performing kids. In-state tuition on average is about $8K/yr, living expenses might amount to $12-15K, most kids at State Flagships are able to work part-time and take out some loans to cover some of the costs, and most parents with six-figure incomes can cover the remaining costs from income, savings, or loans.</p>
<p>2) High-stats kids from six-figure-income families often apply to schools that offer MERIT AID for HIGH-ACADEMIC-STATS kids. Some prominent prestigious examples: Emory, Vanderbilt, Duke, USC, WUStL. Many excellent LAC’s below the very topmost set also offer merit scholarships. Maybe you should be thinking/looking at places like Oberlin, Grinnell, gosh I don’t have time to research who does/doesn’t offer merit currently, but it is worth your while to do so. Next would be a tier of excellent universities such as Tulane, URochester, Case Western, Clark. So the idea is, that you should be able to find a few universities or LAC’s that are willing to trade a merit scholarship for your superior (compared to their average) academics. </p>
<p>3) I want to comment on your statement that your parents might sell their house and move to a smaller house to be able to afford your tuition, but you feel this is too much of a sacrifice. Many families with six-figure incomes in this country have been living in houses that are ‘below their means’ in order to put money away to spend on things they value more greatly. Such as, for example, a fancy education at a prestigious university for their high-achieving children. Other parents spend every cent they make on living in the moment, including a house as large as they can afford, toys (cars/recreational vehicles) and vacations. A high-achieving kid from the first kind of family is more likely to end up attending an expensive private university, and a similar kid from the second kind of family is more likely to end up attending their State Flagship. There are pluses and minuses to both strategies, and the beauty of the American System is that families get to choose. </p>
<p>Perhaps your parents purchased the expensive house at a time when they thought that was the best investment they could make, and now the time has come for them to capitalize on that investment in order to buy something they value (like a Stanford education). Maybe you could work on letting them figure out what the right financial strategy is for them – don’t decide ahead of time that it is just too pathetic for your parents to have to (gasp!) give up their fancy home in order to move into the caretaker’s cottage. It may not be such a romantic choice - maybe the current house was their savings vehicle, and now the time has come to spend the money on something that (for them) is the important goal.</p>
<p>quick addendum:<br>
So anyways, most families with incomes of $145K and 3 children in private schools cannot afford to pay $60K out of current income for the education of one of the children. They either use their savings, or transfer some of their kids’ education consumption to the public systems.</p>
<p>“We have family friends in the US (my dad graduated Ann Arbor and my godmothers husband is American) so if I really need a loan it wouldnt be a problem getting a cosigner”</p>
<p>Don’t bet on this. The person who cosigns is legally obligated to pay off that loan if you can’t or won’t. I don’t know anyone (even a parent or sibling) who is willing to take responsibility for the kind of money you are writing about. Even if you could find a cosigner, just because that person is able and willing to cosign for the first year does not mean that he or she would still be able and willing to do so in future years.</p>
<p>Your best bet, truly, is to look at institutions that your family can pay the full cost for.</p>
<p>And as for the counselor who told you not to apply for aid when you applied to Stanford, that was one lousy piece of advice. Tell the students in the class behind you that the response to that suggestion is to look the person who makes it in the eye and ask, “So are YOU going to pay the difference if I get in and find out I can’t afford it?”</p>
<p>“We have family friends in the US (my dad graduated Ann Arbor and my godmother’s husband is American) so if I really need a loan it wouldn’t be a problem getting a cosigner”</p>
<p>Do not count on that. Co-signing loans is a huge responsibility and not something most people will do…especially for a person who is not their own child. A co-signer is not only financially responsible for the loan if you don’t/can’t pay, but then his own credit score is negatively affected which means he may have a harder time getting a loan he needs while that loan is still outstanding.</p>