Raybyrnes,
Check a little closer. UCLA, UC Berkeley and USC give out hundreds, if not thousands, of partial to full tuition scholarships/year, purely merit-based. I know – I got one when I went to one of those schools that was 50% tuition, and my parents were (and still are) loaded. This is a very effective tactic for luring kids away from the Ivies and Stanford (who both give out ZERO merit-based aid). Maybe this is the reason that USC’s newly admitted freshman class of ~4K students has an average SAT of 1376, indexed to the old scale (2100 on the new scale).

I even had Occidental (prestigious liberal arts school in L.A.) offer me a full-ride back in the day. I had a buddy who went to CalTech and he got major scholarship $$$. The key is that you need to be a heavy hitter academically and have some other quality that makes you stand out from the other 4.0’s/1500’s, especially the ones coming over from India and China.

Bottom line: if you have a household income of greater than $60K, you will get zero need-based aid outside of loans. I personally save like a madman becuase I don’t want to bank on a scholarship, and I want my children to feel free to aspire to any college they choose.