@pickleberry7 I think you are being very thoughtful in considering these issues now (always easier to figure stuff out ahead of time rather than being behind the eight ball). I agree with those saying that it is probably a waste of time to try too many financial gymnastic moves to reduce your family’s expected contribution. Income weighs most heavily, but more importantly over 90% of schools don’t cover full need regardless of what it might be (including EFCs of $0.00).
There are plenty of schools that don’t take into account EFC/financial need/finances when making merit decisions. I know this first hand because we didn’t fill out a single financial form anywhere (FAFSA or CSS) this fall when our oldest applied to colleges.
We determined our firm budget (right around the cost of our state flagship ~$35k/yr) before we helped create a college list with our daughter. The college list we ended up with had colleges with either automatic merit (based on stats) schools and/or holistic merit (looking at whole application beyond stats to determine award, no need component considered). The lower your firm budget number is, the fewer choices you will end up having.
It took a bit more work on the front end to make sure every college our daughter applied to could theoretically come to the mid $30s in cost if she received the merit she was targeting. We had plenty of friendly, direct conversations about cost with Admission Counselors/Directors.
Our budget gave our daughter a large selection of schools that give pure merit (without a need component) from which to choose. The only constraint we found was location if that is a deal breaker. You will have fewer options if your search is targeted to only one area.
The school our daughter choose ultimately came just under $30k/yr after her merit offer. It wasn’t the biggest offer she received by quite a bit, but it was her 1st choice school and it was under her budget limit. Win/win as far as we are concerned.
Figure out what you are willing to pay before you start your college list. Then figure out which colleges will get you to that price. Run some EFCs to give you an idea of what schools would expect you to pay (you don’t need to fill in the personal identifying info to get some estimates) and then make your target list.
Good luck!