You need to figure out the answers to two questions:
- Will you be eligible for need-based financial aid at the colleges she is looking at.
- How much will you be able and/or willing to contribute.
If the answer to #1 is yes, then you need to run the NPC’s at the colleges your daughter is looking at and see whether need-based aid will mesh with the answer to #2. (“Full need” does NOT mean “what you want” or “what you think you need”. It’s just a formula the college applies based on its own internal rules, which may be quite different than your financial reality. For example, a lot of colleges seem to think that home equity is a ready reserve of cash).
In either case you are going to tell your daughter what #2 is. You can’t pay for what you can’t afford.
I’ve always had a hard time understanding why this is so hard for parents. Surely most parents have been telling their children “no” to requests for expensive and impractical items since early childhood. (as in, “no, we are not going to buy you a pony.”) So why do so many think they now must indulge the desires of their kids for an unaffordable school?