@coloraturadad 's post is very indicative of what we learned on our journey, and should be very helpful to other low EFC families. My D had a very balanced school list (academic safeties, matches, and reaches…there is really no such thing as a talent safety, apart from a non audition program). Although she received many exciting acceptances, truly the only two financially possible schools for us were her offers from full-meets-need programs; and we are lucky that Oberlin, her reachiest and favorite program, is such a school. She did not apply to any stand alone conservatories (due to reasons of fit and finances), but even some OOS programs came in at too high a price tag (because of caps on music merit aid). We have since learned about OOS programs that offer excellent music merit and in-state tuition (such as UNT) here on CC that we would likely have added to our list if we had known about them sooner!
We certainly, like @coloraturadad , would have added even more academically reachy, but meets-full-need programs, if we had known more. Everything worked out so well, because D was accepted at Oberlin (and one other meets-full-need program). But a “yes” from Oberlin, and similar programs, is a highly sought after and uncertain one!