<p>Every now and then I read something about a school like Harvard that says they have a financial aid policy where if you make up to 180K, they will ensure that you pay no more than 10% of your income for college. Is this true for private universites and smaller private liberal arts colleges?</p>
<p>No, that is only true for the super endowed universities like Harvard. A $30 billion endowment allows Harvard to be generous.</p>
<p>It’s a way for places like Harvard to get around their own so-called “need blind” policy. Obviously, most families with $180k incomes can (and do) afford more than $18k a year. So H gets to buy the students (read: athletes) they want, while still staying with their fictional story. </p>
<p>It actually costs them much less than you’d think, given the number of students they have who can pay “full freight”.</p>
<p>That said, it is possible to get FA with a family income of $200k – if you have multiple kids in pricey schools. Certainly wouldn’t count on FA being all grant aid, though, and one is likely to be gapped.</p>
<p>Also I think there are restrictions on “typical assets”</p>
<p>^^^yes, that definition was always a bit cagey, IMO!</p>
<p>Harvard also does well in “buying” students who might have otherwise gone to state school honors colleges such as Penn State Schreyer, because it will end up being less expensive than those schools. These are not athletes, btw. Our high school has seen athletes get into HYP schools as well as Penn State as athletic recruits, while being turned down by Schreyer.</p>
<p>The Schreyer people admitted as much when we visited - they do very well in competition with many top 20 schools, but no longer get as many students turning down HYP schools that give financial aid to families in that bracket.</p>
<p>Do people get aid when there income is $200,000? No, not usually. At incomes like that most families also have assets that might be outside their 401Ks or IRAs. Even at Harvard and other schools with generous aid policies it is income AND assets that determine how much aid is distributed. The example of multiple kids simultaneously at college might tip the scale and garner some assistance, but the best option is to run some of the net price calculators to get an idea of what the family might be expected to pay. It might be possible to get merit based tuition discount awards from schools outside the tippy top.</p>
<p>Define what kind of aid you are talking about though. There are schools outside of the Ivy’s that do give aid for higher incomes, often in the form of “merit aid” but not even only that. Plug in 200,000 at a school like Dickinson and see what you get. Even with a salary of $200,000/year, pulling $50,000-60,000/year out of that salary is not always easy when you figure after tax, take home pay on that salary. Now, at a state school where you might pay $25,000, no you probably won’t get any aid other than loans that everyone that fills out the FAFSA gets.</p>
<p>Using the Harvard net price calculator the answers is Yes. </p>
<p>I plugged in a US citizen with one child in college, two people in the family and 200K in income and got $12K off the MSRP. </p>
<p>[Net</a> Price Calculator](<a href=“http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/]Net”>http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/)</p>
<p>“Even at Harvard and other schools with generous aid policies it is income AND assets that determine how much aid is distributed.”</p>
<p>And the number of pounds that the offensive lineman packs.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear: a family making $180k a year that pays $18k a year is NOT receiving need-based aid. It’s pure fiction.</p>
<p>Yes, and what Mini speaks of is also terribly misleading, because it allows these schools to say X number of students recieved financial aid, which makes them sound and seem much more open to low SES students than they really are.</p>
<p>A better measure of true need based aid can be found in the percentage of students at any institution who are eligible for Pell. Many of these institutions have shockingly low numbers of pell recipients in their classes.</p>
<p>Anecdotal evidence, but -</p>
<p>There are many families sending students to our public high school who are taking in close to 200k per year, yet have limited assets. It costs more to buy a modest house in our district than in neighboring districts where there are more families sending children to private prep schools.</p>
<p>Top students from these families, including those who have never played a sport, do mention that Harvard is cheaper for them than Penn State, unless they get one of the full tuition Braddock scholarships. Often it is not only Harvard that is cheaper than Penn State, but also Yale or Princeton. Other schools in the top 20 will be full pay, but some of these do give limited merit aid even if they do not provide need-based aid.</p>
<p>Parnets also talk about having students admitted to these (HYP)schools on the basis of being recruited athletes, after having put lots of money into the training of these athletes, but getting athletic scholarships from state schools and not HYP schools. If they do get a need based discount,it is calculated according to income and assets.</p>
<p>FWIW, Harvard reduced the 10% of income point to $150,000 a few years ago due to the financial crisis.
[Record</a> for financial aid | Harvard Gazette](<a href=“http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/03/record-for-financial-aid/]Record”>Record for financial aid — Harvard Gazette)</p>
<p>“If they do get a need based discount,it is calculated according to income and assets.”</p>
<p>Nope. Most families with $180k (or $150k) incomes do not have anywhere near the need to be paying $15k-$18k a year. (And the obvious truth of that is that if they don’t get into one of the places, they often end up paying at least double that, and are happy to do so. It has almost nothing to do with need (and a lot more to do with pounds or, if for basketball, inches.)</p>
<p>Isn’t that 10% limit applied to tuition only, not room and board?</p>
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<p>But it’s not because of finances. If you are admitted, the financial aid packages at these elite institutions make the institution affordable. There are other reasons why there are fewer low SES students at these places than at some others. </p>
<p>From the Chronicle of Higher Education</p>
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<p>Our family is in fact in this demographic, and we have found it difficult to save money from income alone to afford to pay full price at an expensive private, to the extent that tuition has been escalating and our family’s income has remained relatively stagnant. </p>
<p>It is not because we own a second home, take expensive vacations, live it up with meals outside of the home or expensive cars, or have spent a fortune on tutoring or private schoool for a child in regular ed or for athletic or music lessons - just everyday living expenses in a high-cost school district, health costs for conditions not covered by our medical insurance, and the added expenses - including educational expenses- of having a disabled child.</p>
<p>Most other families we know in our income bracket now seem to feel the same way in this era of stagnant incomes and rising expenses, even if they have not had an ill or disabled family member, and if their talented and hard-working children do not get into a school that can offer need-based aid to take the edge off, they will be faced with the choice of paying full tuition or accepting merit money. </p>
<p>The older the parents, or the lower the parents’ confidence that they will either keep their high-paying jobs until retirement or inherit a large sum of money from their own parents, the more likely they are to go for merit money or state school tuition when the time comes. </p>
<p>Incidentally, when we made the rounds on accepted student days, we ran into lots of parents who were absolutely stunned to find out that frazzled D had gotten into some top schools (including some top 20 schools) and also gotten merit money up to tuition remission from several schools without having ever played a sport. (Imagine that!) </p>
<p>She did have a few friends who were nationally ranked in their sport, who used this as a leverage to get into a school that might have otherwise been a “lottery school” for them, but these students did not also get scholarships from the need-based schools that accepted them. (And in some cases, we heard about this also, because their parents were stunned…)</p>
<p>The maximum total amount of aid is received by families with 2 children in college at the same time. A family will typically receive more aid in total, then if those same 2 students were attending college during different years.</p>
<p>In response to some other comments above, sometimes it is easier for a student to stand out in a public high school that has many lower income students. My kids were in the top 1 and 2% of their classes - they may not have broken the top 10% in an affluent competitive suburban public school. They also were able to easily make it onto several varsity high school sports teams because most of the students did not have an interest in the teams. Moreover, they were able to get themselves elected to be Presidents of major clubs, with little or no competition.</p>
<p>We are in an affluent suburban district. Our high school dropped class ranking several years ago, and saw immediate increases in numbers of students accepted into elite schools and especially HYP schools as a result. I think there was a concern that too many excellent students were seeing options closed off because they could not make it into the top 10%.</p>