"Meets financial need" is just vague enough to be both truthful and misleading.
My experience is both personally anecdotal (4 schools including ND) as well as info from my wife's work with lower income NJ kids gaining college entrance. ND info is about 8 years old, so take it for what it is...
ND is not the best with financial aid and I think they feel they don't need to be. They have great outcomes and think the education is worth it and are comfortable that kids/parents will have loans from attendance.
That said, it seems kids fall into a few categories.
- don't need the aid... pretty fair, these kids get charged full whack
- really need aid... for kids that are really in need, and perhaps your daughters friend is in this category, the tuition can be handled by a combination of federal loans, modest parent contribution, university job. Again, this seems pretty fair and the University seems to do these kids right.
- could use the aid... these kids in the middle I think get a bit of a tough deal. ND does not seem to care too much whether the parent is putting other kids thru Catholic HS, multiple kids college education etc. These kids and parents get stretched quite a bit and parents need to step up to big loans both subsidized and unsub to make it work.
I think some other schools are more generous with aid and again I get it from ND's perspective. The education is great, the line is long, and the outcomes are excellent.
Again, great news for both of them!