<p>I saw that with my son, he would get much better packages at some schools than with others with the same need met. I assumed at the time, he was wanted more at some than others, but also looking more deeply into some colleges later, endowments weren’t very high, and I’m sure they wanted to spend money on the highest stat students or students that had something they wanted that year.
At one college on this board a student said she got a large award and asked for no FA. Another student with need, similar stats, got less, much less. They obviously wanted the other student to give her an award, it was their choice.
If you try to figure it out, you can’t, there are too many variables, which is why I “tried” to have my kids throw a bigger net this year, although I don’t think things will be dramatically different.</p>