Should I apply to other schools?

Telluric
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 09:17:17 +0000

@Telluric Why do you think the schools offer different aid packages? I thought since they all claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need and since they all receive essentially the same information (FASFA, iDOC), and all have close to the same tuitions that packages would stay pretty consistent?

While they all say they will meet 100% of demonstrated need, each and every one calculates that “demonstrated need” differently - even when given the same information. As @skieurope mentioned, some colleges weight and consider certain categories of information like home equity more or less than others.

You can kind of see this in Princeton’s aid application. Princeton requires the PFAA but not the CSS Profile, and at least when I applied, the former was significantly less detailed than the latter and ignored several things the CSS profile considered - and I suspect that contributed to me getting much less from them as I couldn’t include all my circumstances.