If you can’t afford the high price schools or don’t want to pay the cost of the high price schools, then you must find some schools that fit in your budget and that your kid would like to attend.
If you think you might qualify for some need based financial aid at the higher cost schools you can run the NPC from that school to give you an estimate of what you might pay there.
If your kid has very good grades and testing stats they may qualify for some merit money at certain schools and this can sometimes bring the cost down to close to what a state university might cost.
Don’t take out a bunch of loans to go to a higher priced school because of the prestige factor.
We saved a bunch of cash for 20 years in 529 plans and then set aside additional money as well. This plan works well as we can afford to send the kids to school. The downside to this plan ( not really a downside, just reality) is that because we have a large nest egg of cash to spend on education costs means we are not eligible for one dime of financial aid at schools that only offer need based aid. So, if we want to send 2 kids to the school of their choice means we shell out $140k per year and basically drain all of the savings we have for them. That’s what we saved for and we are happy to use it, but I admit it is a somewhat harsh reality to write that check.