<p>I understand your frustration. My D encountered the same issues with respect to outside scholarships. She was able to get merit aid at several schools by applying to what I think are great, but not as highly ranked, colleges where she was in the top 25% or better of the applicant pool. It was a necessity for us because we are full pay without that 400k income and I don’t want D to incur too much debt. A college’s common data set is a good way to find out how much merit aid (w/o need) a school awards. Some schools award large sums to very few students (ie Duke) while other schools award merit to a large percentage of students (ie Centre). </p>