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Message: [QUOTE="Blaneylover, post: 4279169, member: 7023"] The college application/selection process is brutal for the student and the parents. The merit aid game is maddening. For my two daughters, two years apart in school, both wound up at their second choice schools due to financial considerations. We told them that we would send them to their first choices, tuition free, but then would be largely unable to help them on different things, going forward. Each of them had a great undergraduate experience and each will have zero undergraduate debt. Their decision to go to their second choice schools saved us $260,000. A friend of mine knows someone in the admissions/financial aid business. He was told that the entire underpinning of the merit system is that "some families deserve the opportunity to pay full price" for attendance. For some families, getting in is the only consideration. There are abundant funds to pay, regardless of cost. For others, the first issue is getting in and the second issue is affording it. We were committed to leaving our girls with no undergraduate debt and we were able to do that. Now, thanks to the mature decisions that they made at 18, we are able to help them with postgraduate opportunities, leases on apartments, and perhaps, a future wedding or two. As your daughter makes her choice, trust that wherever she decides to go will turn out to be the place she was meant to be. [/QUOTE]