@HHuntforCollege, I’m also an SDSU alum. I wasn’t sure of the fit for my kid when we toured, either.
Why apply to schools you know you don’t want to pay for? Run the net price calculators, then decide. I also went to Michigan, and wouldn’t have paid OOS tuition for it. Look for larger schools where she might get merit. Drop Michigan and UT for sure. Northwestern, too. Doubt she would get anything at UWashington, either. Ohio State (yes, I know ?) gives some decent OOS merit.
OP, would your DD consider other private schools of a similar size to Northwestern? SMU (previously mentioned) and Wake Forest come to mind. SMU has a decent amount of merit aid. And Wake Forest might be worth a look because of her geographic diversity and being Hispanic (from what I know, less merit than SMU). Her stats would make her competitive for both schools.
As you know, merit aid is more likely at schools at which your DD would be toward the top of the applicant pool or desirable for other reasons.
ETA - Alabama is a CC favorite for automatic merit aid but I’m not sure what the requirements would be to get the price down to what you are willing to pay (based on in-state UC costs).
Oh, the horror of sending my kid to TOSU! It’s become a good school though.
While I don’t want to pay an extra $80K to send her OOS, I might need to. I’d rather her be happy attending a school she likes and paying the $80K then paying in state or even less expensive OOS and her be unhappy and feel like she is settling after all the hard work she has put in.
While we will consider SMU (that was one of the schools I looked at) and Wake, both good schools, I think both will be culture shock for her, and she wouldn’t fit in based on how she has grown up. (I grew up attending a prep school in the Midwest and she grew up in a large public school near the beach in Coastal California). Michigan was a change for me and it took a while before finding my fit, which was a bit painful and I almost transferred.
This being said, I think another school mentioned by the GC was Clemson. A big enough school where she can fit in might be the right thing. What do people here think of Clemson?
For SDSU, Undeclared is one of the most popular and competitive majors so again I would consider it a target school not a safety school. Take a look at the Decision thread from this year and see how many highly qualified students were waitlisted or rejected. SDSU had around 94,000 applicants for around 8,000 spots this past admission cycle. She has a very good chance but it is not a guarantee.
Another possibility if Clemson was mentioned would be the University of South Carolina.