““Meet full need” can be a rather empty promise, because the college determines what “need” is.”
So true.
Each school can determine how they define need. For example, some schools consider home equity an asset and expect the family to use some of that HE to pay tuition. Some schools ignore HE. That can make a big difference to a family that is house rich/cash poor in a high cost area.
Some schools “meet full need” in part by giving the kids student loans. Other schools commit to meet full need without loans.
End of the day, each school (even mega-bucks HYPS) have a budget that they have to hit. There’s a zillion dials that they can turn in order to enroll the class that meets their institutional goals for diversity, academics, net revenue, etc. etc. etc.
And just like there’s many different flavors of “need” and need-based aid, there’s many different flavors of merit – competitive merit, automatic merit, whatever merit. Some schools give “merit” aid to 90% of student. Some give it to 0.00009% of students.
End of the day, aid is aid. And the schools synch up their aid programs with their admissions programs.