[remote_phone]

One of my friends told me at one of the FAANGs, some of the employees were openly asking on financial-planning internal mailing list in how to qualify their kids for financial aid or grants because they made too much.

[sacnoradhq]

Biggest hack: go work for Stanford for enough years as an FTE.

https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards/tgp/ben...

[alistairSH]

That's true, there's a niche business for consulting on gaming tuition and aid (as well as college admissions in general).

FAANG engineers certainly earn enough that gaming the system isn't necessary, but "don't hate the player, hate the game" applies.

For normal middle-class families, planning for future tuition is a massive undertaking.