There are over 3000 4 year colleges in the US. Almost all of them are need blind in admissions is what I believe. Most of these colleges are hardly discussed or mentioned on this forum or on any national platform. Most discussions on colleges focus on the 10-20% with the most name recognition except on a local basis.
If you want to randomly call a portion of those college, the ones that are hardly known, not the ones listed in the NYT article or come up in the google lists as need aware or need blind , you’ll see what I mean. Most of these schools will auto accept anyone who meets their admissions standards before the FAFSA is even submitted. Getting any aid from them other than the entitlements is a whole other story. Most of them simply have very little of their own money for financial aid so it’s a moot point whether their students have need.
I won’t even get into the for- profit on -line schools. If you want to attend, you pay, somehow , whether you have need or not. That’s where loans come into the picture for these schools as well as the non profit school where most of the students do have need but the school has very little in funds to meet it other than loans.