I don’t know if this is a novel takeaway since my oldest child is a senior this year and it is my first cycle. However here is my financial aid takeaway
If your kid is applying to a meets need school, but you are worried that the net price calculator may be inaccurate or your finances are unusual, you can talk to the financial aid offices on the phone before submitting an application.
In my experience, several financial aid offices had very nice people who were willing to answer questions about our specific financial situation and how it would likely play out if my kid decided to apply. All I had to do was ask for a phone appointment and each office spent about 15 minutes on the phone with me in August and September. When one of the officials didn’t know the answer to one of my questions, he was willing to talk to his colleagues and then as promised, he emailed me a few days later with an answer. While they didn’t quote exact figure, the financial aid officers were able to discuss whether their NPC was likely to be accurate given our specific situation.
These conversations helped distinguish which schools would likely be feasible for us before my kid got their heart set on applying to them. Thus we were able to eliminate one school from her list and add a couple of others. An official at my child’s original first choice college explained why it would be better NOT to apply early decision to that school despite the fact that she liked it very much. They advised us to just wait until RD so that we would be able to compare offers and possibly negotiate if my kid ended up with a better package from another meets need college. This turned out to be really wise advice because in April, we were able to point out that other colleges had interpreted the CSS differently.