I don't know if either that's actually true, or just how poor you have to be to be considered middle or low income, but I'm on the college application treadmill and the schools seem to consider you "high income" if you bring in enough income to pay for the cost of college, whether or not there's anything left over afterward.

This might be true for the Ivy leagues, but from what limited research I had done 20ish years ago, many private colleges talked a whole lot about the aid they offered and didn't deliver if you had even a moderately middle class family.

My family was caught in the middle "too poor to pay for it; too high income to attend for free". (Both my parents were public school teachers; we were not worried about putting food on the table but were hardly rolling in it...)

Not sure how true this is. Perhaps it doesn't count for internationals? But at least one person I know paid pretty much full price despite coming from a humble background.

Only if you get accepted to Harvard. Everything below the top Ivies you're gonna have to pay for.