You’ve likely already seen this, but there is a thread each year discussing TE. Here is the one from last year:
There is also a spreadsheet with users’ TE results from the last couple years.
That can give you a sense of how the process has worked out for different students here.
There is a big variety in how each school handles TE and other types of aid. You just have to find out what each does, by looking at past TE threads here, and by asking every school.
The NPCs can be helpful, but you have to add more context. In our experience, the NPCs helped us know how much merit aid and need-based aid a school offers in general. How they combine that with TE is unique to each school.
Our friends have twins who just finished the TE app process this year. They qualify for need-based aid at some schools. Their offers were all over the place. They both got several TE offers, and both got a number of affordable offers, including public safeties. One twin will attend a non-TE selective liberal arts college on a near full-ride (merit and need-based aid). The other twin will attend a TE school that also gave generous merit and need-based aid but did NOT give the student a TE award (the offered aid is equivalent to TE).
ED should only be done if the student has a clear favorite school that offers ED, and if you know it’s affordable based on the NPC. My kid is at an ED/RD only school on TE and he applied RD. He was also awarded TE at a different school that was ED/RD only.
I’ll add that some schools’ NPCs are quite good and others are not (irrespective of TE). I found that the more info it asked for, the more accurate the result was compared to the actual offer. But TE can throw a big wrench in that. Most of our son’s offers came in at or lower than the NPCs.
I know it will take time to skim the past TE yearly threads, but there is a real wealth of info in them so it’s likely worth settling in with your favorite beverage and a snack to do so (if you haven’t already).
You’ll see insights like: TE at Villanova is the longest of long shots, Delaware appears to be entirely stats based, Syracuse is holistic and will award up to full tuition while others schools never “stack” additional aid, Dayton often gives an aid package at least as good as the TE award would have been, Pitt might also but it depends heavily on major and financial need, etc.
There are some schools which receive a lot of TE applications. Some of these are more “prestigious” institutions and those award are super hard to get (e.g. Boston, Villanova). Some schools give out a lot of TE awards and others have very few. That’s not necessarily correlated with institutional prestige (e.g., Case Western is relatively prestigious but generous with TE awards and merit/need aid in general).
The percentages given on the TE site are sorta helpful, but the info you get here will likely be more helpful. Like if a school gives out 2 awards and has 10 applicants each year, or 2 awards to 50 applicants, or 20 awards to 100 applicants, the numerators and denominators matter as well as the percentages.
I think it’s rare that TE means no need-based aid consideration. Let’s say your SAI is $30K and the school has a policy of meeting financial need. They’re going to get you to that $30K whether that’s via TE or other aid. But meets-need schools are usually going to either be your in-state publics, or highly selective privates. Most schools that are not in those categories will give aid according to their institutional priorities. And that’s where each school is different. Perhaps a school which says it won’t give additional aid beyond TE is merely adhering to a normal practice in which they never give more than the equivalent of the TE amount in aid to literally anyone, no matter their need.
In our experience, our SAI was ~$25K and almost every offer came in between $20K-$30K. Our son applied to NO schools that claim to meet full financial need (other than our in-state publics). There were a few that were a small amount lower than 20K or higher than 30K, but they all got pretty close to our SAI via a variety of aid mechanisms (TE/merit/need) despite none of them officially being full meets-need. He did have good grades and test scores, and didn’t apply to super selective places, so I don’t know how that outcome would have been different if his stats were lower or had he applied to fancier places.
ETA: Some schools do TE waitlists and others do not. That is also an important variable. My kid got off 2 or 3 TE waitlists. One school’s AO told him in a meeting (before he’d applied) how many TE awards and applicants they had the previous year, how their waitlist worked, and that he was likely to get an offer. He also told him he wouldn’t get any additional MERIT aid on top of TE. It happened exactly like he’d predicted (got an offer after being on the waitlist for a short time). We were able to compare his non-TE offer to the new offer with TE. They gave him pretty good merit and need based aid initially. His amended offer with TE was even better (and still included some need aid). This will all vary by school.