I just ran the estimator, pretending that I had a sophomore in college.  SAI was 100K or better.  When I tried to figure out what an SAI was I learned you can get a private student loan for between 5.5 and 15.5% interest.  I guess learning that is a free education for me right there.  

Looks the the equation is Cost of Attendance less Student Aid Index = Financial Need.  I'm glad to know I have worked hard and smart enough that the fed.gov thinks I should be able to afford 400K for any college-aged kid I would have today to get a 4-year degree.


Fortunately it looks like the universities are working hard to make the cost of attendance high enough to qualify most people for financial need ...


Back 20 years ago under the Expected Family Contribution regime it was something like 75% of the student's income + 15% of the parent's income + 5% of the parent's investment net worth (not exact numbers but something in that range), and you spread it around over however many kids were in college.