When the honest number is smaller than the dream

Sometimes it is, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. But a smaller number is a constraint, not a wall, and there are more routes through it than most families realise: a strong department at a less famous institution, a cheaper city in the same country, starting at home and transferring, a year of work in between, or the funding that goes unclaimed every year because nobody applied.

What matters is that you and your child search those routes together rather than the child discovering the limit alone and quietly shrinking their plans. The constraint is a shared problem. Handled that way it is one of the more useful things you will do together.