<p>I would think that you would be much better off generating a ‘consensus of aid amount’ by using the NPCs.</p>
<p>For us, I ran the NPC calculators at a 3-5 sample set of ‘similar’ schools (price,location,student quality). For example, I did…</p>
<p>Set 1…Centre, Hendrix, Rhodes
Set 2…Wooster, Denison, Gettysburg, Dickinson
Set 3…Bates, Colby, Hamilton
Set 4…Lafayette, Bucknell, Lehigh, Colgate</p>
<p>I found that the out of pocket cost for us was very close across each sample set giving us a good idea of approximate cost for a similar school. There really were not any cost outliers when you compared similar schools. What you can’t do is compare Centre to Gettysburg. While they are closely ranked, their location, initial price, etc are vastly different so they can’t be grouped together to get an aid consensus.</p>