General planning- of course. More savings is better than less. A kid with high scores will have more options (throw the merit dice?) than a kid with low scores. A kid who has clear direction intellectually but is somewhat flexible in terms of location, lifestyle, etc. is going to have more options than a kid who WON’T consider single sex or Catholic or New Orleans or Allentown PA.
But other than observing that Harvard is more generous than Brown-- doing a deep dive on specifically which schools are going to treat your particular finances in which way- boy, that’s the road to heartache. Plus- the schools are under no obligation to keep their current system in perpetuity. When one of my kids was a senior, the “best buy” college was Brandeis. A terrific merit award, a lovely campus; kids in the donut hole for the need-only colleges could do really well there (close friend turned down Dartmouth with a small need based package for a super generous Brandeis merit package). So a few year’s later my next kid comes along- and Brandeis’ fabulous deal is a distant memory. The fantastic Wash U merit awards had dwindled to a few uber competitive scholarship (still a great deal but no longer something that the top kid could kind of view as a safety); a couple of the need-blind schools had become need-aware- and the whole landscape had changed.