<p>“There are only 26 totally “need blind” colleges or universities in the US.”</p>
<p>There are actually NO “need blind” colleges in the country (except the military academies perhaps, and maybe Cooper Union and Olin). The only question is the extent to which they use need in making admissions decisions. For example, no college could make a commitment to increasing the percentage of students who are low-income if they were blind to their need. The flip side is that it is extremely, extremely unlikely that a college could maintain virtually exactly the same percentage of full-freighters year after year after year without knowing their (lack of) need status in advance. </p>
<p>Now do they need to know the need status of individual candidates? In the first case, probably yes. In the second case, probably no (they can figure that out from zip codes, etc.)</p>