I hate to sound like a broken record citing “my neighbor” but they made a lot of mistakes. One was taking the advice of a hired counselor not to fill out any FA forms. The kid applied to one Ivy and a number of need aware schools. The family is doing pretty well but not stratospherically well and likely would have received some aid, but I think the counselor wanted to maximize admission results for his own ego. Well . . . the kid was admitted to a number of need aware schools that he could not attend because he applied as full pay but they somehow didn’t pay attention to the sticker price. If you really can pay out of pocket comfortably it can give an admissions boost but if you can’t or are on the edge it isn’t a sound strategy. (not that OP was planning to do this, but it is one data point)