<p>“They may be. However, generally speaking, the language in the college viewbook and the reality may be very different. In other words, not all “100% need” schools offer the same financial package. They can’t offer what they don’t have so, in general, schools with very large endowments like Pomona and Swarthmore tend to offer larger packages to “need” students” and tend to offer smaller loan components."</p>
<p>This is mostly a bunch of bleep. Occidental has more than double the number of Pell Grant recipients (those with family incomes under $40k a year) than either Swarthmore or Pomona - actually more than both combined --and they’ve made it affordable for ALL of them, or they wouldn’t be there. Occidental is much, much more diverse than either of them. In fact, on the whole among LACs, those with the higher endowments tend to be less diverse than those with lower ones - they actually choose to spend their dollars in other ways. </p>
<p>But with so many hundreds of wonderful colleges and universities in the country, and your son having so much to offer (he has a shot at virtually every college in the country), you probably should think a little bit more about the large v. small, rural v. urban, etc. issues, so your questions can be better addressed. The top 50 or so LACs (those which meet 100% of need), and 50 uni.s in the same category draw their faculties, especially in such large majors in the social sciences and English, from the same pool, and the students mostly come from the same pool as well.</p>