When people say NYU isn’t good about awarding financial aid, they are talking about middle class and upper middle class families. If your family income is $30k/year your best bet is going to be either an in-state public or a private university that gives a lot of financial aid. Generally speaking, the bigger the endowment/student and the more selective the college, the more generous the financial aid will be. For example if you were fortunate enough to be admitted to Harvard or Princeton, your EFC would be about $4,600/year which most can manage, getting admitted to these schools of course is another matter. A 32 ACT will be high enough for merit aid at many colleges but probably not a place like Carnegie Mellon. The percentage of students awarded merit aid varies a tremendous amount from one college to another. DePauw, Case Western, Oberlin, GW - these would be four schools who give out a lot of merit aid to a lot of students. If you would like send me a PM and I can send you a book that I’m publishing soon that gives you details on merit aid / financial aid