Guidance

We told our children that we would help them with college (and managed to save a small amount of money on one salary, split up among the offspring).

The choice of college is important for more than just academics (romance comes to mind).

We have strong religious and political opinions and refused to spend our good money on ideologies with which we had strong objections. If our children had chosen one of the schools where there was a big problem, we'd have had a big discussion.

But, we generally buck trends: when our kids got married, we told them: "If you are old enough to marry, you are old enough to pay for it, and we'll be pleased to sit in the pew and enjoy your day."

We opted for a middle ground. We worked with each of our kids to define their educational and career goals. Then we helped them research and select a list of 5-10 colleges that we thought would best help them reach their goals and would be financially feasible for us so they could graduate debt free (after our contribution, scholarships, and their part time jobs.) Then we let them make the final decision from there. It balanced parental input with giving significant decision making to our kids. Their first choice was not necessarily the same as ours would have been, but it is their life. All 4 of our kids ended up in the right place for them.

In our case, there has been a huge change in the 6 years of our 4 kids applying to colleges. With our oldest, there were plenty of merit scholarships at different level of schools, although much slimmer at the very top. This made it easier to weigh options. With our last, perfect scores, grades and a ton of leadership there are not many schools, selective level, that offer any merit money. Our state flagships now offer a $5000 per year for their honor college students, a large decrease in six years. It is discouraging that merit has almost disappeared and it will be interesting how this affects many people who might not be financial aid eligible but do not have 30,000 per year for tuition and the make up at some private colleges and universities.

We laid the groundwork when they were small...making sure they did their homework, urging them to participate in Gifted and Talented when it was offered, talking about "when you go to college..."
Then when it was time for them to choose a list of colleges I listened to what they wanted in a college and added a value-priced parent pick to their list. We visited their list of schools. One wanted a bigger school in a 4 hour radius. The other wanted a smaller school within a 2 hour radius. Both ended up at the parent pick because they were affordable (not necessarily the cheapest) and met their needs.
We had saved up the cost of public college for each. They both graduated with no debt.