Best and Worst Colleges for Meeting Demonstrated Financial Need

To wrap our financial aid week, we turn again to some extremely valuable data meticulously compiled by independent educational consultants Jennie Kent and Jeff Levy.  In recent years the two consultants have put out annual lists, two of which deal with financial aid stats at American colleges and universities:

1. Domestic Undergraduate Need-Based Aid and Merit Aid: Excel | PDF
2. Financial Aid for Nonresident Alien Undergraduates: Excel | PDF

Today we delve a bit deeper into analyzing one statistic in particular: the percentage of demonstrated need met by colleges across the U.S.A. Demonstrated need is a loaded term. It does not translate into what families think they can pay for college each year; it instead is defined as the difference between total college costs and the family’s ability to pay – as deemed by the college (and whatever formula it uses to determined family need).

With this mind, here are the the bottom 25 colleges in terms of meeting demonstrated need for domestic students (percentages indicate percent of need met for all undergraduates):

Next, a better list: the top schools for meeting demonstrated need – a sixty-way tie for first between all schools that meet 100% of domestic students’ demonstrated financial need: