<p>^ lakeaweed’s analogy sorta works, but the boundary points are a little off.</p>
<p>Some schools in the top 30 and even the top 10 do offer merit aid (whether we’re taking about national universities or LACs). These include Chicago, Duke, WUSTL, JHU, Rice, Vanderbilt, USC, Wake Forest, and UNC (USNWR top 30 universities), as well as Davidson, Grinnell, Smith, Oberlin, Macalester, Colorado College, Richmond, and Bucknell (USNWR top 30 LACs).</p>