The 60 schools on these lists meet full financial need, but it’s a bit of work to slog through them looking for match schools:
The other important thing to keep in mind is that “meeting full need” means need, as the college determines it. It does not mean meeting FAFSA EFC, and it does not mean meeting what the parents think they need. Usually it will be an amount that is higher than fafsa EFC, so if FAFSA EFC seems unrealistically high then it is also unlikely that need based aid will suffice. I think that this problem gets worse over time as college tuitions continue to rise. A family with an EFC of $50K will qualify for aid in a world where college COA is $70K – but if the parents can only afford $20K per year that won’t do much good.
From our experience at our D’s private college which “meets full need”, the college’s EFC for the past 3 years has been slightly less than the FAFSA EFC, but usually only by several hundred dollars.
Troy Onink has a really good article on the Forbes website on how EFCs are calculated and we recommend it highly for families planning for college.
Students receiving full need aid are fortunately insulated from tuition increases; if the family’s finances remain the same, the “need” increases and the additional need is met. Colleges fill their allocated full-need financial aid seats, so it works for the families. There can be trouble when a family’s finances are a bit unusual, such as running a business.
The distinction between need-blind and need-aware is irrelevant as an applicant; if you otherwise like the school you apply, but indeed knowing that your chance of admission might be lower at the need-aware school. Meeting full need is the important factor.
If it is really that 100% of kids with her GPA and SAT scores were admitted AND the data is recent (past 2 years) AND there were a number of kids that applied (not just 2 or 3), then I would call it a match. Make sure, however, you are looking at the correct GPA if you are looking at the college data. They are likely reporting UNweighted GPA. If you student has a 4.0 weighted but a 3.3 unweighted, the fact that 100% of the 4.0s were admitted may not include her.
If this is a top 10 school that meets 100% need, there is no such thing as a match and unless your student attends an elite prep school, it is hard to imagine that every kid that applied was admitted.
Not sure what your real question is? Are you trying to decide whether to add more applications? For a student that has a lot of need, make sure you have a number of financial safeties as well as academic safeties. “Full need” as defined by the college may not be the same as defined by you, although the NPC should be pretty accurate.
A few thoughts. First, does you daughter know if she wants city, college town, rural, or suburban? That is an important factor. Second, what does she want to study? If a school is affordable but doesn’t meet the location and academic major criteria it shouldn’t be considered. So you need to start there (IMHO). Then you find ones that are affordable and where she seems to be on target per the Naviance data (or whatever your school uses).
Finally, have you had the “money will be a factor” talk yet? If not, do it now. We started when the kids were sophomores. What we said is that the final cut would be based on net price. If two schools were in the ballpark (which we defined as $10K per year) then it didn’t matter. But if were more, it would have to be a factor.
Good luck!
I think the concept of looking for matches is overrated. Find a couple of safeties that your child would be happy to attend. They don’t have to be the local state universities though for many students at least one will be. For STEM kids a small to midsize tech school may be the ticket, or a school that is great in a few programs even if it’s not quite as strong over all may work, a former women’s LACs that will forgive more statwise when they are looking for boys. (You may have to dig into Common Data sets for the last info - Naviance won’t help you here.) Then apply to a variety of schools with a range of acceptance rates. Your kid will have at least two choices in the spring and probably more. My older son applied to 6 reaches and 2 safeties - he got into two of the reaches and chose between them. Also if you can apply early action or rolling admissions (not early decision) if you get in, you’ve got one safety in the bag. My younger son dropped some match schools from his list when he got into a reach school. He hadn’t visited so he applied to most of the rest of his list including a safety school he really loved.