<p>Rolling in dough in comparison to rolling with...umm...enrolled students? LACs don't need as much $$ to play hardball with hahvahd.</p>
<p>Penn on the other hand has almost 10,000 undergrads. They cannot afford to compete with Harvard and should accept that. The newly-announced plan is either deceptive or delusional and i say that as a Penn student.</p>
<p>I don't think those changes in other colleges' financial aid policies coincidentally happened just after Harvard's announcement My husband knows an administrator at Penn., who told him that they were working very hard to quickly improve their financial aid after Harvard's announcement. </p>
<p>The schools that I think will have the hardest time figuring out what to do are places like Wash U, Duke, UNC, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt and Emory that use excellent merit aid to lure star students away from Harvard. Their top merit aid is only offered to students with the kind of stats that put them at the top of a place like Harvard's pool. Parents making more than 6 figures would probably feel it's worth $10-$18 k a year so their kids could get a Harvard degree instead of going to Emory, etc. for a free ride.</p>
<p>There are a lot of kids at Harvard already who gave up a free ride at Emory.</p>
<p>Again, the 10% figure is not as simplistic as it sounds. There is a lot that will go into the way Harvard calcuates aid for those in the $120k - $180k bracket.</p>
<p>Could someone explain to me why colleges like Harvard with huge endowments can't structure financial aid like taxes? As your income rises your percentage of income paid to taxes rises. There is no income level over which everyone pays the same absolute dollar amount. So someone earning $1 million does not pay in taxes what someone earning $250K pays. I think this is exactly what colleges should do. I think that under this model the cost of funding the university would be much more equitably spread across all incomes. The full freight cost to my family is far greater than to a family with an income many times greater. The arbitrary cutoff that treats all incomes over $180k essentially the same seems preposterous to me.</p>
<p>i've heard this a lot of times but don't know where. is it true that u don't have to pay princeton back when u graduate? lol it's like whatever money you borrow u don't have to pay back</p>
<p>Princeton has a no loan policy. </p>
<p>Cost of attendance - EFC = demonstrated need.</p>
<p>they will meet your demonstrated need with a combination of workstudy & Scholarship/grant aid (However, they may loan you money for incidential items like clubs).</p>
<p>Princeton</a> - News - Grants to replace loans for all students on financial aid</p>
<p>While YMMV, Princeton's no loan policy does not mean that if your family does not have the EFC that they won't have to borrow it (because they just may have to).</p>
<p>Mammall:</p>
<p>Much as I applaud Harvard's initiative, I don't see that it is obligated to do as you suggest. You don't go into a store expecting to be charged less for the exact same coat or loaf of bread just because you have a lower income than another customer. Yet, food and clothing are even more basic than a college education--and you can shop around for less expensive though still excellent schools. Why should private colleges be morally obliged to use different scales? It's good they do. But no need to scold them if they don't.</p>
<p>"The full freight cost to my family is far greater than to a family with an income many times greater"</p>
<p>Mammall: I don't understand this statement. Could you explain?</p>
<p>It sounds like she means in percent of income terms.</p>
<p>Pomona College just announced that their aid packages will not include any loans, either. If you can afford the fafsa efc and can get in, you can go.</p>
<p>i hope uchicago comes out and says we're giving more aid too...</p>
<p>It seems unlikely though....</p>
<p>Swarthmore has gone "no-loan" as well...and made it retroactive for all current students starting with their 2008-09 financial aid packages.</p>
<p>This is the start of what Morty Shapiro predicted a while back would be a move where the super endowment schools go to free tuition -- or even paying students -- as the top grad schools do.</p>
<p>This trend towards heavy price discounting at the top of the spectrum is brutal on the schools that have been using merit aid discounting to attract students.</p>
<p>I'm not sure I agree with that interesteddad. In my experience, it is the middle and upper middle income people (who can not afford their fafsa efc) who need and use the merit offers. Those people don't bother to apply to the need only schools listed above. Even if the student got in they couldn't go, so what's the point?</p>
<p>sly_vt,
I understand your concern about schools that "gap" with their EFCs. However the schools going no loan, with the possible exception of Davidson, do not tend to gap. There is no reason students couldn't still take out Staffords or Perkins loans if they want to do so.
Princeton has had this system since 2001. About a quarter of students borrow an average of about $4500 over their undergraduate careers. Someone at the admissions office told me this was mostly students borrowing during junior and senior years for eating club costs, which the University this year has addressed by boosting aid for this purpose. Some students likely will still borrow, but fewer people, and maybe for less money.</p>
<p>citrus belt,</p>
<p>Harvard will expect a family with $180,000 annual income and corresponding assets to pay much, much less than the FAFSA EFC.</p>
<p>danas: I'm not talking about gapping. Gapping is when your EFC is $20,000, and the school tells you to pay $40,000. I'm talking about when the EFC is significantly higher than you think you can pay, like in this thread: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/429295-you-got-kidding-me.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/429295-you-got-kidding-me.html</a>.</p>
<p>Hi, sly_vt, I know danas has an experience base with this issue, and what he says is that you apply, and you find that the expected family contribution from several of the top need-based-only financial aid policy colleges is affordable, period. Maybe the calculation didn't used to result in a free full ride, but it resulted in an affordable situation for a very broad range of family incomes. He and I are not talking about what some general online calculator shows, as did the thread that you linked to, but what an actual offer of financial aid from a particular Ivy League college shows. Yes, some families in some income ranges can receive offers of a lower nominal price from colleges with "merit scholarship" policies, but even a couple years ago, a lot of colleges without such policies were very affordable to a lot of families. Now with Harvard's new announcement causing further adjustment of policies, it looks to me like more colleges than ever of the need-only variety will be more affordable than ever for more families than ever. Not all learners will desire to attend the same colleges, but it's a good idea to apply widely and see what's on offer for financial aid after a student has been admitted to one or more colleges.</p>
<p>For a family with a gross income of $120-180k and no other major assets (not including their primary home, which will not be factored into their assets), Harvard should be as affordable as UMass-Amherst, the state's flagship university, currently costing about $15k.</p>
<p>Just a clever way to give full scholarships to athletes. H could be the new USC.</p>
<p>Boulder's</a> Hanson commits to Harvard : Top Stories : Boulder Daily Camera</p>
<p>hello.
i've been interested to see how others would see the Harvard initiative.
FYI: while no schools come close to harvard's endowment of 29 billion, (yale-18, stanford=14 down to emory @5 billion etc), the top schools do have money they could parley somewhat.
sherbear</p>