TLDR; Stanford says they only give aid based on need. Their data shows this is true for "base" aid but then they also do "increment" on this aid (without knowle

TLDR; Stanford says they only give aid based on need. Their data shows this is true for "base" aid but then they also do "increment" on this aid (without knowledge of students) which is to make class more diverse. So you end up with some students with more need but less total aid and vice versa. They say they will look in to this and make process more transparent. Interesting part of the story was that this was found out by student who got hold of unintentionally accessible data and spent months analyzing it to discover how Stanford gave aid.