Public School boost being full pay

I know lots of public schools will give a slight advantage to OOS students who can pay full. I was wondering if I have to no apply for FA for this boost to come into play. Or just the fact that someone is high income mean that they will have a higher chance?

I’m asking this because I want to know if I should even apply for FA.

Thanks

Run the net price calculator to see how much aid you might get. This gets discussed a lot out here. If the school says they are need blind, then I’d take their word for it, and it won’t matter. But I think schools that consider need look at how much need you have. Like if you might be $5000 of need based aid, you are going to be more desirable that someone who needs $50,000 in aid at schools that consider that.

I’d say if the NPC shows you possibly will get some, go ahead and apply for it. FYI, we were in that boat with one of my kids. Likely to get a max of about $10K in aid if we applied for it. We applied at the schools where she wasn’t likely to get merit and they “meet need”. For the ones that she honestly wouldn’t have attended without merit, and was a strong candidate for merit, we didn’t bother (and she indeed got the expected merit, which was greater than $10K in all cases). She got about $10K of need based aid for her first 2 years of college, then as my finances improved we became full pay. That is kind of what I expected would happen, I have no animosity toward the school for it. But $20K of need is nothing to sneeze at, at least it wasn’t for me.