<p>It may be because of my ridiculously subpar searching abilities, or it may be because I'm overlooking some evident fact, but I've been wondering about this for a while, and I haven't found a decent justification for it yet...</p>
<p>According to my "CollegeBoard My Calendar" thingy, for a couple of the colleges I applied to, the "Deadline for college to notify students of financial aid" date is set before--in one case, a full month before--the "Deadline for college to notify students of admission" date.</p>
<p>So I'm supposed to find out my potential financial aid package before I even know if the university will let me in? Or am I misunderstanding what these things mean? I'm just picturing getting a letter from one of my reach schools in March saying "Hey, you get lots of aid!" followed by a letter in April saying "By the way, we don't want you. Go away." Or would they just not offer aid to a student they plan to reject, so I can open the financial aid letter and extrapolate from the minimal aid that I'm going to get the inevitable rejection in a month? Or am I, as is my habit, completely misunderstanding something?</p>