Financial Aid. . Lies?

The National Jurist, a magazine for law students, recently published an article listing the most generous financial aid packages. (The article is on page 23, I can't link directly to it.)

The top five winners are:

1. Thomas Cooley: 93.9%
2. Toledo: 61.4%
3. Liberty: 51.2%
4. Northern Kentucky: 50.4%
5. La Verne: 49.0%

Percentage represents the median financial aid package for students as a percentage of total tuition. For example Cooley's tuition is ~30k a year, so they are giving a financial aid package median of 29k+.

On the surface these numbers look amazing. I'm a little suspicious just by looking at the variation in numbers. Cooley's aid package is twice the total of the number five school. Cooley, Cooley, Cooley. That makes me wary. I think one has to look at what is not being said in this article:

How many students are getting financial aid grants? I could give 20 students out of 1000 a huge scholarship and get to the top of that list. Yep, that's right this article is meaningless! Cooley is apparently giving out full scholarships but for the median to be so high it is likely that there are far fewer other scholarships gives and/or few overall. I need to know how what percentage of students receive grants!

Secondly (haha, classic English I transition sentence), I need to know what the financial aid package is for 3 years not for incoming students. Are students receiving more aid in future years? Are scholarships lost? No idea.

Finally, the article gives no mention of the tuition of these schools.
Toledo's tuition is 8k instate and 13k for out of state. Affordable.

Liberty's tuition is 27k. Very expensive! (Includes fees)

So even if I receive no grants from Toledo, it is still more affordable than receiving the median grant from Liberty. Many examples from public law schools will quickly make a mockery of this list.

For additional analysis on this article see the TaxProf Blog.