<p>The bottom line is if you need financial aid or merit money to make it work for your student to go to a college that costs more than $X, if you are going to qualify for financial aid, based on your income and assets, it’s just one more factor in the picture. If you don’t get accepted for ANY reason whether it’s because the school is secretly or openly need aware, you aren’t likely to know. Even those school that say right out that they are need aware do not tell those students who were not accepted due to financial need that reason. Nope, not at all. And I have seen kids get accepted to such schools with a lot of financial need. Some of the need aware schools give very nice aid packages to those that they do accept. Much better than most need blind in admissions schools that gap a lot. So, if you can’t afford a school without the financial aid, you might as well apply for the aid, since you certainly aren’t going to get penny one if you don’t. </p>
<p>But you build in that factor, that you are also dependent on fin aid, merit money, in the college app list. All students should have some fail safe schools, and those schools are ones that the family certainly can afford even without aid and are school that will most certainly take the student. Such schools may be the local CC or the local state school. Perhaps there are schools with low sticker prices to which your student can commute. Maybe some guaranteed scholarships in the picture. My son had a number of sure things, and some that were long shots that he probably should not even have bothered to apply to, since there was no way he was getting any fin aid and merit was highly unlikely. But, a couple of schools in that category did pan out with just enough merit money to make them within reach. </p>