"Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, reports that the cost to attend for the 2018-2019 academic year included $54,320 for tuition, $9,120 for rooming, $5,550 for boarding, $,2,017 for personal expenses, $1,595 for books and $1,236 for fees — totaling roughly $73,892.
But for some students, the cost of attending Brown is significantly less." …
From the article.
No surprises here, IMO.
Cuz I was curious as to how this fit with the other ivies:
MEDIAN PARENTAL INCOME (highest in the country is Colorado College 277,500)
STUDENTS FROM TOP 20% (highest in the country is WashU 84%)
STUDENTS FROM TOP 1% (highest in the country is Trinity College 26%)
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/brown-university
Perhaps this is a silly question, but, how do they know? Clearly, if a student applies for financial aid the school would have parental income. But for full pay parents who do not file for FA - how would the school know this information? In this case, for the 19% at Brown that they identify as the highest 1% of American earners, it seems unlikely they would have “bothered” (for lack of a better word) filing for FA. Thanks.
The most worthless info ever as its VERY individualized as to what the cost of Brown is. These are numbers only the administration at Brown cares about.
@CUandUCmom those numbers are via the NYTimes, not Brown.
NYT says
With a link: https://opportunityinsights.org/
I don’t feel like digging into the source trail beyond that.
Thanks @iwannabe_Brown. I didn’t dig through the whole report either - but found it interesting with a quick skim. The researchers indicated, “We use de-identified data from federal income tax returns and the Department of Education to obtain information on college attendance, students’ earnings in their early thirties, and their parents’ household incomes,” so that explains how they could connect the students with their parents regardless of FA status - which answers my question. The downside of the study, though, is that they used children born between 1980 and 1982 which means these kids graduated college 15 or so years ago so the income analysis may no longer be valid. In any case, thanks for passing along the link!
@CUandUCmom Great catch on the fact that they are kids born between 1980 and 1982 which, as you said, means they most likely graduated college in 2002-2004. The NYT piece was about social mobility more generally, but that caveat makes it actually incorrect of CNBC to say the median household income of a student “at Brown” is $204,200. As you correctly point out, that was the median family income of students at Brown between 1998 and 2004. Brown only started being need blind to Americans when admitting the class of 2007 and wasn’t across the board need blind until admitting the class of 2010.
And yet,
Meaning the two aren’t mutually exclusive. About 13% of the class both comes from a family in the the top 20% and receives need-based financial aid.
FTFY
the income numbers do appear low, maybe it’s because of the NYT numbers being 15 or so years old, as the minimum to get in the top 1% bracket is $421K (Economic Policy Institute) and the average income of the 1% is $1.32 million. So if 19% of Brown is top-1% the 200K may be understating wealth.
I hate these stories. They always seem to be titled “what students really pay.” Come on. Schools also send out marketing material that sometimes includes “average net cost” numbers to show what families “really pay” and it’s also mentioned sometimes at info sessions when you visit. We are a full pay family and it doesn’t apply to us and I’m not really dying to know what the “average” amount is that is paid. These schools never mention that, in many cases, 50% of families are full pay. (At least that’s the number we found at many of the LACs that S19 applied to.)
It’s false advertising to give a number that families “actually pay”. We knew better but many families do not. It’s easy to read an article or a marketing brochure and get the idea that you won’t pay full price.