Not all schools promise to meet need. In fact, most don’t.
And not all schools will calculate need as you’d want them to.
But this is why you always have a 100% affordable and highly likely to be accepted school on your list.
So when push comes to shove, you have a place to land.
Dealing with any school over your sticker price that doesn’t guarantee merit will always come with risk.
Yes, that is why I specifically asked for information about schools that don’t meet need when I started the thread.
I am really only asking about OOS public schools that don’t promise to meet need, and don’t have automatic merit. That’s not because that’s all my kids are looking at, but because that’s where I am confused. Other categories of schools have been easier for me to figure out.
It can be complicated. For these schools, know that most won’t give any need based aid (beyond any federal aid) to OOS students (of course run the NPCs to double check.) Then look at websites for what merit scholarships are open to OOS students, their highest amounts, and whether the student must demonstrate need to qualify. The CDS can be helpful to see what proportion of students receive merit aid and how much on average.
The reality though is that a student might have to apply without really knowing if the money will be there, making the school unaffordable if they are accepted. It’s fine to take that risk, as long as one has at least one affordable highly likely school on the list.
Lastly, there are publics that start at a relatively low COA before discounting (all financial aid is discounting.) These are schools like Central Michigan, Western Carolina…see this thread for some more: Public Schools with No or Minimal Tuition Differences for Out-of-State Students and this one, but it’s a bit dated: Which state schools do not charge an OOS rate? And will also give merit?
Unless I missed it, you haven’t shared your state of residence. Some states do have reciprocity with other(usually neighboring) states and students can receive in state tuition rates at those state schools. Something to look at if it applies to your home state.
Why not look at the ones that DO give auto merit to OOS students. There are some OOS public universities that give auto merit aid…all the Alabama schools, Mississippi, Miami (Ohio), U of Arizona, Arizona State, University of New Mexico….and I’m sure there are more. Plus the less costly ones mentioned upstream. Perhaps your student would be interested in one of these OOS public universities.
Some of the Texas publics give instate tuition to students receiving more than $1000 of merit aid. Some schools lock your aid for all four years (Ohio, but not Ohio State).
If we knew where you were looking, it would be a LOT easier to give good suggestions. Or feedback.
My kids applied to mostly northeast coast schools that don’t offer automatic merit. However, many of them had overlaps, and I was pretty good about guessing what they’d be offered.
But beware that each college can define “need” differently, so the same student and parent financial situation could result in vastly different net prices at different colleges that claim to “meet full need”. Use the colleges’ net price calculators rather than relying on “meet full need” claims.
We are looking at all schools at this point. But since I know how to figure out if an auto merit school is affordable, I didn’t start a thread about how to figure out if they are affordable.
I haven’t and due to privacy concerns, I don’t plan to.
There’s an online app called College Aid Pro that purports to capture this type of information through crowd sourcing. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the information, but you might find it useful to test. There’s a monthly fee for using it, but you can get I think three colleges to view for free to see what it says. You put in a lot of your info (GPA, SAT scores, location, etc.) and then it’ll give you an estimate of what it thinks you might receive in merit aid.
This may or may not be helpful, but in my circles people sometimes talk about a college being Likely for admissions, but a Target or Reach for (sufficient) merit. The basic idea is you need a couple Likelies that you know will be affordable, but then can do some more that are Targets and Reaches for merit if you identify some promising ones.
Anyway, I more or less see the OP as asking how to get information to sort colleges into categories like that.
Well…some net price calculators DO ask for stats and do give estimates for merit aid. But this student, I believe, has not completed 11th grade so…those would be very gross estimates at this time.
Plus…NPCs are just now being set for students graduating HS in 2026…and I don’t think that is this student. Financial aid policies change, and the family income could change too. For example…kids starting 2026 use 2024 tax year info, 2027 will use 2025 tax year info, 2028 will use 2026 tax year info, 2029 will use 2027 tax year info.
And there is no way to predict how merit awards will be altered in coming years..and boy have they been in the recent past. Some merit awards no longer exist at all. Some have been significantly reduced. Some used to be automatic but are now competitive. Etc.
That would mean that they are target or reach, because admission but too expensive = rejection.
Absolutely.
Really as an aside, I note sometimes the family’s approach is merit would be nice but not required. However, in practice, if there is a good list like this, then some colleges WILL come through with merit. So the ones that don’t, at least if otherwise comparable, won’t be competitive in the end.
I don’t think that the policy changes that will be coming down the pike have been adequately studied to know which colleges are going to be radically altering their financial aid.
Losing overseas student revenue, research dollars…these will not be trivial.
I don’t think looking at last year is going to be at all predictive of what the aid picture will be when the OPs kid is applying.
Yes, I’ve already noticed quite a few reddit and Facebook posts from continuing students and their parents who are surprised or shocked at their aid packages for 2025-26, compared to 2024-25. Of course I don’t have the big picture, only these anecdotes. But I expect there will be more changes for 2026-27 and I agree we just don’t have enough information right now.
I am thinking that for S28, a balanced list might include a couple schools that are reaches for admissions but guarantee aid, a couple schools that are targets for admissions, and reaches for aid, and then a mix of schools that are safeties or targets for aid and admissions including some that are safeties for both.
S26 is looking at a bunch of smaller regional schools, many of which are either state schools we know will be affordable or have NPC’s that include merit.
Of course things could change. We could have a financial windfall or a catastrophe, schools could change their policies, etc . . . but we have to start looking somewhere.
This is most important - removing two words (or targets) or your last three words - safeties for both.
Others - you can play with and if you guess wrong or it doesn’t pan out, then no harm is done.
Good luck.