Best Schools for Financial Aid

It’s really not about what schools have the “best financial aid” – all boarding schools have the financial means to give you whatever aid you would need to attend. The question is whether they will give it to YOU or to someone else, as they have a relatively finite pot of money to use. If a school had two candidates absolutely identical to each other in every way except that one needed FA and one didn’t, obviously they’d admit the one who didn’t need the aid. In order to choose to admit the FA candidate instead of the non-FA candidate, there’s going to have to be something that they like more about the FA candidate. There are lots of ways that you can make yourself stand out as compared to other candidates – sports, interests, personality, etc. But given that you have pretty strong SSAT scores, one way you can make yourself stand out is to apply to some schools where your SSAT scores would put you pretty well above the school’s average SSATs. I’d look at some schools with average SSATs in the low 70s and see if any of those look like a good fit for you in other respects.