An income of $280k is ~6 times the median US income and puts the family in something like the top 5% of wage earners in the US. That’s upper income. I don’t believe colleges take their area of residence into account when determining aid, so if a family is hoping for that when applying ED they probably shouldn’t apply ED.
I don’t understand how the cost comes as a surprise. Are kids applying ED without running the school’s Net Price Calculator? If the parents are divorced or business owners and the amount of aid makes a difference, why apply ED? I also don’t understand how they end up with other financial aid packages to use for comparisons. I thought the way that ED works was that families knew the costs going in and if the package ended up in the ballpark, they agreed to accept it. In return for the early consideration, they agree not to look at other packages. How much merit money they got elsewhere isn’t supposed to factor into the decision.