I wasn’t talking about merit awards. I was suggesting that a relatively selective private school might … depending on your financial situation … be price-competitive with some OOS public schools, based on need-based aid. Assuming you qualify for enough n-b aid, that is.
For example, assuming $160K/year family income, CA resident, 2 children, $80K cash savings, and $160K home equity, I get the following net price estimates:
$43,268 Macalester
$42,905 Grinnell
$41,754 Bates
$41,148 Whitman
Using the same assumptions, here are net prices I get for a few Jesuit schools:
$71,148 Santa Clara
$54,270 Loyola U. Maryland
$47,920 College of the Holy Cross
$46,643 Boston College
YMMV.
Agreed, @tk21769 my point was only that a profile school defines very differently than a FAFSA school, thus EFC is not equal. For some that may be a benefit and for others the reverse. One must run the NPC for each with their own financials to determine what may be offered and some have no interest in filing at all, especially the more invasive profile form.
Your post mentioned EFC in a way that could be confusing to folks who are not well versed in the 2 different methods. My point was only to state that whatever your FAFSA EFC is, which all FAFSA schools will treat as a set number, will not be the same at PROFILE schools. In our case, for example, most PROFILE schools (Santa Clara and Mac included) assume we can pay about 10-16k more annually than FAFSA does and that is with 2 in school. For others it could be the complete opposite.
Need is also calculated annually so is not something that can be guaranteed all 4 years, whereas most merit offers are. As @Marcelle has not mentioned need based aid as a component, recommendations were provided based on merit alone. I also think using the common data set for each school is prudent to understand the chances on merit if it isn’t auto based on stats.
I will say however that I firmly believe everyone should file FAFSA and/or PROFILE at all colleges on the list no matter the financial situation as you really never know. My current sophomore at an OOS public school received an additional merit based grant for his 2nd year that he would not have, had we not filed and really goes against conventional wisdom for our EFC, as well as the CDS, especially given the scholarship he already had. I absolutely agree that everyone should really check each school to see based on their own financial situation. Many go into this thinking need aid will magically appear, it’s important to do homework to understand chances. It is true that offers may both surprise and disappoint and not match the NPC results but it is a solid place to start.
Santa Clara $71K? Yikes! When I was going there for grad school 30 something years ago it was $215 per unit and I thought that that was uber-expensive.
My understanding is that Santa Clara tends to offer some small merit discounts. (The NPC asks for scores.)
Santa Clara will/may offer merit, but likely not enough to get under 50 on merit alone.
Over the past couple of years I’ve run their NPC 3 times and have seen anything from 4-30K for grants/scholarships. They are not a meets full need school, however if there is “some” need the package will likely be quite a bit better as their average merit award for non need students is 16k.
Thanks @tk21769 for the insights and feedback!
@aquapt appreciate the Rose-Hulman suggestion. I’ve heard good things. Need to give it another look.
@eandesmom is correct. We didn’t mention need-based aid because we won’t qualify for any. I’ve run NPC on a few of the schools on our list and merit is showing around $17-22K for his stats. The $50K budget is our target, we can flex if we think it’s worth it.
Our son is on the spectrum with high functioning autism and we believe large schools would be overwhelming. It’s the reason we’re focused on small to mid-size schools. We know the UCs are bigger. They’re included at our son’s insistence–he’d really like to attend UCSC–and it might be that the small living communities at UCSC would make it more manageable.
We’re also leaning towards a school that’s more collaborative than competitive. He’s done better in that environment, and frankly that’s the way the tech industry is headed. I work in Silicon Valley at one of the big three and the culture is very collaborative.
We liked SCU when we toured but they plan to grow 600 students (about 10%) in the next two years with the new $300M STEM facility, that’s aggressive. We tour Seattle University and Portland in a week, and we’re hoping he likes one of those, given the intern/work opportunities in those areas, although I understand Portland’s department is rather small.
Denver’s engineering program may not be as deep as our son wants either, but we’re interested in its learning resource center. On paper it’s impressive, and we’d like for him to have the executive functioning support for the first year to help with the transition. Plus everyone who’s been there says DU is a lovely school 
This is interesting. Did they give any details, e.g. majors/programs, grad vs undergrad? Did they say anything about increasing the next incoming class? Just wondering.
@evergreen5 They didn’t specify undergrad/grad but it’s all in STEM as part of the new facility. I don’t doubt that in the long run it will be amazing, but I was taken aback by how aggressive their plans are. It can be tough to absorb a 10% increase within a couple of years.