Some college pricing is transparent, guaranteed merit schools, for example. Get the 3.5/8 and the 32 ACT and you’ll get free tuition from bama and temple.
But lack of transparency just means that we have to create a buyers market for ourselves by applying to more schools. My son got similar discretionary, not guaranteed, merit offers from Midwest lacs as my daughter and her grades and scores were higher. But lacs want more boys. Or maybe more musicians, hard to know. But both had choices and when we saw the final offers we got to say no thanks to quite a few of them. As can anyone who applies appropriately.