My Google searches have all lead me to believe that financial aid for William and Mary is quite hard to get if you are OOS, is this true?
Is financial aid merit based or need based?
Financial aid is mostly need based. There are merit based aid available if you are from underrepresented backgrounds (ie: first generation college student), overcome tremendous challenges, or are an extraordinary candidate. However those are very limited and while I do know some OOS students that have gotten a good amount of financial aid, they have a very limited pool of financial aid resources that they can dedicate to out of state students, therefore make sure that you have other options available.