<p>To A.E.'s point — how can any school claiming to be “need blind” show a decline in the percentage of students on aid in a recession. More than that, however, how in the world is one able to project any budget reduction (the $457k cited by interesteddad) in the coming year? If one is need blind, one would have no clue what the final overall budget will be until all the students are offered admission and then the chips fall they as do (that is, who chooses to attend). A school can say it is raising the work component of an aid package and expects to save from what the total FA cost would be, but if truly need blind, it would never be able to predict any kind of accurate savings over the previous year for it would not know who its students will be and how needy.</p>