You make too much to qualify for need based aid yet you want your kid to attend an expensive university and you want the rest of us to pay for it. Why does it surprise you that your position isn’t generating much sympathy?
Where’s your empathy and compassion for the low income kids whose aid you want to take? Colleges have a finite amount of money to give, yet you want the kid whose parents make $200k/year to get the same aid as the kid whose family makes $30k/year. Where do you think that money would come from?
In order to make the same amount of money go further, colleges would have to reduce the aid they give to each student. At best, you’d get a small discount. That discount might be enough for you to be able to afford that elite school, but the loss of aid would make those schools unaffordable for our lowest income families. Taxpayers can’t afford to make up the difference, so your kid would effectively be pushing a low income kid out of college. Without that need based aid you could afford another residential college, but most low income families can’t. Where’s your compassion for them?
If the only choices you see are bankrupting your future to pay for elite schools or sending your kids to what you think are mediocre schools, then your problem isn’t money. You’re spinning your wheels and wasting time. In ~6 months your daughter will need to start submitting apps. You really need to determine how much you can pay without sacrificing your retirement and start looking for schools that are within your budget.