Can expensive colleges cost less than state schools?

CCapable students decide every year not to apply to the most selective private universities because of the published cost of attendance, and what we learned from Stanford's admissions office suggests many of them have misread the number. They assume those schools are for families who can pay that price, and they cross them off before an application is ever started. In many cases the opposite is closer to the truth. The colleges with the largest endowments have the most money to help, and they use it, which means a school a family ruled out on price may have been among the most affordable on the list. Getting this wrong costs nothing anyone can see, which is why so many families do it.