This is good advice, but don't forget that "your ability to pay" is just code for "perfect price discrimination."
I'm firmly of the belief that for the top-tier schools they'd do better just having no tuition and making quarterly reminders of the value of their education, counting on getting it on the flipside from alumni donors down the road.
At least when I went to school 20+ years ago, the very top-tier private schools were very close to that, having large endowments and using them for both merit-based and need-based financial aid in grant form, so that most students paid substantially less than the nominal tuition, and quite a lot of students paid very little to no tuition (and often were subsidized for books and housing, too), such that for most students they were less expensive than nominally cheaper less-elite schools.
That said, you shouldn't need to take those kinds of loans anymore. We went to a top-10 school for CS back when you still had to get loans for them. These days, there are nominal costs, but all of the top-tier schools I know of cover any difference between you/your family's ability to pay and the tuition. I would personally be somewhat skeptical of the lifetime earning potential you are getting from any institution whose alumni have not given so much money that they can easily afford to cover any gap you have in your tuition payments.