How reliable is the net price calculator?

From all the threads on here, I am definitely under the impression that NYU gives little to no money in terms of financial aid and scholarships. However, I just did the net price calculator and from that, it says I would be getting around $31,000 in grants and scholarships. This may not be a lot but for a school that apparently doesn’t have a great financial aid record, this seems pretty good. So to my question, how reliable is the net price calculator? It just doesn’t add up to me.

I’ve seen it waver some in other posts, and the questions they ask definitely simplify the process to give rough estimations. You can expect something in the ballpark, probably around ±$5K, if there aren’t some dumb circumstances (divorce is a common source of obfuscation, for example). It’s an ok amount of aid and more than a good number of students there get, but you could probably get a lot more aid at other schools.

I just tested it out myself, and they would give me around $40K (it says $45.3K, but I think it factors in what I assume to be full Pell Grant) for a final net price of around $26K (rough estimate). That’s a lot more expensive than any of the other top private schools I have checked. Pretty sure that’s where the reputation comes from.