re: College Applications Are A PITA

I've done this over and over in my head - it comes down to a relatively simple decision tree:

Question #1: Does your daughter want to go to graduate school? If "yes," go to the cheapest option you provided. So long as she does well at that university and has good GRE/MCAT/LSAT/GMAT scores, going to Arkansas or Alabama will by no means disqualify you from going to a top-tier graduate University. If the answer is "no,", try as best as you can to make Vanderbilt work financially.

I work at BB I-Bank, and the amount of networking, and graduate work I had to get here vs. kids that went to Vanderbilt, Stanford, Emory, Ivy-Leagues, etc... was painstaking. Fortunately, had a good internal network and played the game right. Like anything else in life, it's very important to be smart, but knowing the right folks are what separate you and give you the leg up, especially early on. If she wants to get into a name worthy consulting/banking firm out of undergrad, it's a massive leg-up.

Sounds like you have a smart kid on your hands that clearly works hard, so, kudos on what is the hardest job of all - raising someone like that.

As for dollars and cents, it would be worthwhile to consider the above.

Also, as an Alabama alum, if the money is better at Arkansas, take it. When you get out of the south, I can tell you there is no discernible difference between virtually any SEC school on reputation (Vandy aside).

It's really where you want to work. If she wants to move out to Dallas/Houston/OKC, Arkansas is probably a good spot. But if she's interested in Atlanta, Chicago, or even NYC, Alabama seems to have a lot of alumni there.

Food for thought based on my personal experience.