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<p>A claim to “meet full need” for all students, or the class of students that the prospective student is in, still says very little. See the example in the first post where a school claiming to “meet full need” (USC) gives higher net prices than the in-state price of a school that apparently does not make such a claim in its Common Data Set even for in-state students (claims on the Common Data Set to meet full need of about 25% of students, which is much lower than the in-state percentage).</p>
<p>It does appear that the Common Data Set definition of “meet need” in section H2h and H2i means that subsidized federal loans and work study (i.e. expected student contribution) may be counted, but PLUS loans, unsubsidized loans, and private alternative loans may not be counted.</p>
<p>That may mean that a school which expects students to take the full $5,500 federal direct loan (including the $2,000 unsubsidized portion) would not “meet need” by this definition. It looks like both USC and UCLA expect the student to take the full $5,500 federal direct loan (try net price calculators for a $0 income California resident student). So UCLA technically does not “meet need” since the unsubsidized federal direct loan is used, while USC is filling in the “meet need” answers incorrectly (claims that average percent of need met is 100% in <a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1138”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1138</a> , which presumably gets it from the Common Data Set that USC does not publish).</p>
<p>Of course, the technical definition of “meet full need” in the Common Data Set may not necessarily be the same as what colleges claim on their own web sites.</p>
<p>Bottom line: “meet full need” claims mean very little. Use the net price calculator instead.</p>