<p>I do dislike ED for a number of reasons, but for the OP, this may have brought to light a fundamental problem that the student may have with a number of applications that were filed. As I said before, I doubt Middlebury is doing anything unusual and that like PROFILE schools are likely to come up with a similar need definition. With this happening in February, there is still time for the OP’s student to revamp the college list to make sure that there are some affordable schools on it. THough all lists should have these affordable schools, this, many times those schools are just tacked onto a list when a student has high stats and is highly likely to get accepted to any number of schools that give good aid packages. Now the student knows that despite the NPCs and EFC estimators showing need, the more generous schools are not going to see it that way. What was a possibility is now a probability, Some lower cost schools, schools offering merit awards, schools where the OP’s DD is in the highest echelon in terms of academic profile should be added to the list since PROFILE schools are not likely to give this family the financial aid they had hoped to get.</p>