If someone who is or has been involved in college admissions or financial aid could help me I would really appreciate it. I'm a senior in high school, and I'm working on my college applications. I don't want to go to a state school, I'm aiming for Brown, Yale, Tufts, Wellesley, and Brandeis. I'm a National Merit scholar semi-finalist, I have great SAT and SAT II scores, a decent GPA, and I'm involved in many extracurriculars inside and outside of school, including clubs that I have helped to found. I'm confident that I will be accepted into at least one of these schools, but my parents make just over $180,000 combined, too much to qualify for a reasonable need-based grant, which includes work-study towards tuition (as based on the Ivy income-percentage program). They really can't afford to pay for all four years at a private institution; they need to save for retirement. I don't know what to do, I might as well not even bother applying out of state. I'm crying, desperate, and turning to Yahoo! Answers because I don't know where else to go.