<p>Back in the stone age when I was in college, my recognizable-on-CC-selective-LAC was very up-front about its aid policy. You received full need-based aid, or you were admitted with no aid. No one received partial aid. Every year one or two of the admit-deny students did manage to scrape together enough money so that they could attend, but most of them went elsewhere. I have no idea what the criteria was for funding some of us but not the others. Maybe the financial aid office simply assigned the money until it ran out? Or maybe they had some other system for determining who got it.</p>