It is hard to piece together from the available data, but I would love to know which schools do more small financial aid packages v full rides. Full rides serve a different purpose (getting the rock star low income kids in high demand) v smaller awards that help middle class folks afford the price tag.
If colleges are a guide, true merit scholarships don’t happen at the high demand schools. But there are a ton of full rides based on FA. Mid range schools offer merit to compete for talented middle class kids. I would also guess they offer more partial FA.
Just curious how that plays out for bs. The only numbers available are percentage of students on FA and the average award. It takes some work to do the analysis.