This should be setting off all sorts of alarms as WashU is a key member of the COFHE group of colleges and universities, representing the American colleges with the most generous need-based financial aid payments:
Consortium on Financing Higher Education - Wikipedia
If the NPC for WashU is telling you it is too expensive, that would indicate bad news for Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Columbia, Penn and virtually all the eastern seaboard LACs,