MSAR data for financial aid friendliness

[Glassdyr]

Help! I'm poor! I'm preparing to apply this cycle and trying to pinpoint schools that would be a good financial investment i.e. are likely to give scholarships. There are a few data points on MSAR that could be interpreted differently and I was curious what the general consensus is.

Average undergraduate indebtedness: If a school has lower indebtedness, would that be a result of financial aid or parents having fat chequebooks? For example, U Vermont has an ungodly $229,642 while must T20s are much lower, usually <$150k (not great, but still...)

Disadvantaged status: Would this be an indicator of good financial aid at a school, if a bunch of us poor people go to a certain school?

Percentage receiving aid: This seems the most promising, but U Vermont still has very high tuition and a high indebtedness, even though 88% receive aid. Should I skew my application towards schools with high aid percentages?

I'm also keeping city cost of living in mind and judging that as a factor. What else could I be looking for on admissions websites?

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[ihoop24]

I wouldn't use MSAR. Go directly to the schools financial aid pages and do some searching on here. Many of the top schools have started debt-free programs for low-income students. Many of them also offer merit scholarships. Disadvantaged status just shows what percentage of the class is disadvantaged, so not necessarily a proxy for good financial aid.

 

[Morningnight]

Percentage receiving aid: This seems the most promising, but U Vermont still has very high tuition and a high indebtedness, even though 88% receive aid. Should I skew my application towards schools with high aid percentages?

This one is a tough one to base your decision on too because a school can give little amounts of aid to large amounts of students, and that would skew the % of students receiving aid higher. Like @ihoop24 said, I recommend looking at individual schools' websites to see whether they have any formal merit/need-based aid programs. You can use average indebtedness to get started with your research tho.