One thing to keep in mind is that more academically selective colleges tend to either give less merit aid or no merit aid at all (as the majority of incoming students have good stats/merit). For example, the Ivies and other highly selective schools like Northwestern or Tufts, do not give any merit aid, but they give need based aid. Often, for those who are chasing merit aid,the wisdom is to seek out colleges where the student is at the higher end of the “stats” of admitted students. This is not that hard to do for a MT applicant because many of the MT programs are located in universities that are not highly selective ACADEMICALLY speaking. A very strong student is more apt to get merit aid at Point Park or University of Hartford, which are not too selective academically speaking, than to a school like NYU, which is pretty selective on the academic front for the entire university.