The whole college financial aid system is completely FUBAR'ed. I had a friend whose mom was a doctor and dad was an attorney (might have been the other way around?) and she got a lot of scholarships, based on her ethnic background. In her case, it's not really such a bad thing - she was brilliant and worked hard, and ended up going to Harvard. Harvard's tuition is expensive for almost everyone - even doctors and attorneys.
But at the lower levels of tuition - the mid-priced private schools and state schools, the discrepancies can be a little nuts. My parents are both school teachers - we are NOT rich. But my parents are good at budgeting, they own their home (never moved since mid 1970s), and they have carefully saved little by little for their retirement. So when I applied for college, the schools all looked at me and thought "Both of her parents have jobs, they own the home, and there is money in the bank." I didn't qualify for any meaningful financial aid (EX: Vandy's tuition was about $28K, they offered me an $8K package of a little grant and mostly loans, and expected my parents to write a check for $20K every year).
My junior year roommate grew up in a VERY ritzy town along the coast of Florida. Her high school was an exclusive private academy - the tuition cost way more than UF's did. But her dad owned his own business, and the family had "no assets" because almost everything was tied up in the business. She qualified for a freakin' PELL GRANT!!! She was completely naive about it - she just remarked one day, "oh I've got to take my paperwork in for my peel scholarship." I was like "what the heck is a peel scholarship?" And she's like "Peel, or maybe Pell? I don't know, dad's accountant filled out the form for me." She showed me the paper and I was like
! I told her, "This is a Pell Grant! You're supposed to be really poor to get it! I don't qualify for it!" She called her dad and told him she didn't think it was right, that she felt like she was stealing from poor people, etc. He didn't care and told her to turn in that form, some crap about how the government taxed him too much so he was going to take back what he could. Attitudes like that just make me sad.