100% true, and this includes prestigious schools. Family friends whose finances blew up a few years ago — family business failed, etc. — had an income of about 45k for two parents with two kids. They are lily white and hail from a NYC suburb, meaning no colleges “need” their “type”. Daughter is a very good student, but not a star athlete or freakishly talented in any way. She applied to about ten very good private colleges, including Smith College and others like that, was accepted at most. Here's the really good news: almost all gave her GREAT financial aid packages, requiring very modest contributions by the parents and no loans or very modest loans (e.g., one top school would have her graduate with under 15k total after four years, which isn't bad). The rest was “aid”, meaning her parents didn't pay it and she won't have to pay it back. She ended up choosing a highly competitive, prestigious school in New England that happened to require her to take out no loans and requires her parents pay only the cost of books per year.
That’s the kind of deal parents can work, if they’re willing to make the effort. My oldest boy also had a lot of liberal arts colleges after him (his math was better), but he wasn’t interested in moving off to the wilds of New England or the Upper Midwest.
He did two and a half years at our community college, and then went into the business school of UNC-Charlotte (local branch) as a junior. He’ll graduate this summer with his degree in Marketing, and then *leave home*!!!
He probably would have loved a liberal arts school, though. His transcript is full of things like Literature of Modern Latin America and Perspectives on British Colonial India. It’s all fodder for someone in marketing!