I think a 4 year merit aid is pretty safe, but I was and am very nervous about grant aid that needs to be reapplied for each year, in fact in our case my ds 20 and us decided to turn down Syracuse which only offered a one year at a time merit aid package to him, it would have been the top of the amount we would have wanted to pay, really about 5k over with the package, case is 74 k a year , but if he lost any part of the package it would have been very hard to make up so we passed on case in favor of a merit aid package that was Locke din for 4 years.