<p>I am risk adverse about these things. I have seen kids and families just not take something into account that has blown their fin aid plans out of the water. I have seen schools stint on financial aid. If someone who really knew what he was doing could look at all of your financial data and come up with definite go ahead for ED fin aid, I suppppose you could do this safely. But even then, things can happen. Schools change financial aid policies. They change a lot of things. The big thing though is that there are differences in financial aid awards that cannot be predicted unless you can compare. Basically, you take a risk and you don’t know if you can do better.</p>