"Families will be thinking about their indebtedness at the end of the four years, and that will affect decision-making," said Charles V. Khoury, director of guidance at the only high school in Ridgewood, a New Jersey suburb.

According to financial aid officers, the families most affected by the discrepancies are upper middle income families, which pose the greatest problems to officers trying to determine the right aid package.

"It's very much like the admissions process--every case is reviewed independently," said Miller. "Still, we have more than 100 families making more than $100,000 a year on financial aid."

"If you're in the low income group, you'll pretty much get a free ride," said Georgia Arrington-Booker, chair of the guidance department at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in Washington D.C. "But [the colleges] have always had a problem with packaging the middle-income students."

The change in financial aid, according to counselors, is already changing the way they advise students.

Booker, who has held her position at Wilson for 20 years, says that before the consent decree, she advised students to apply to only one Ivy League school. Students applying to more than one school, she reasoned, would get lower aid awards.

"I suspect that before [the consent decree], the financial aid offer would be that of the college with the lowest financial aid budget," said Booker. "Now that the colleges aren't getting together, it's okay for students to apply to more than one Ivy."

In the 30 years that have passed since the principle of equal access became doctrine at colleges and universities all over the country, admissions officers, while courting prospective students, have fervently pitched the company line: choosing where to attend college should not be a financial decision.

"The financial aid program was established...so that when students chose colleges at the end that would be based on the intrinsic merits of the college, and that cost would not be a primary consideration," said Bewig.

But the consent decree and the resulting discrepancies, according to counselors and students, has changed that.

"I'm finding more and more children are going to opt for schools where they get some help," said Booker.

And Khoury says that he sees aid as an increasingly important factor in decision-making. "I think it's a factor of the decision that's going to play an increasing role, but right now it's still a secondary factor," said Khoury.

"If it ever crept into where 'I'm going to make a decision based on my financial aid package'--and we may get there if costs continue to rise--that's bad," said Khoury.

Shopping Around

But high school counselors and students also report a phenomenon that the discrepancies have created--students negotiating their financial aid offers.