I do not work in College Admissions or a Financial Aid office. I DID, however, get two sons through college. One chose an out of state, state school where his 100% merit-based awards EXCEEDED the cost of going to school there. Most semester, when he enrolled, they gave HIM money. The other son went to t Top Tier private school.
Those eight years of schooling had a sticker price of nearly $200,000. I paid about $32,000, amounting to about $2,000 per semester. This book is about how I did it and what worked for me.