<p>Most of the non-HYP Ivies are right around 50% full-pays; the outlier is Brown which is nearly 60% full-pays.</p>
<p>% of undergrads receiving need-based scholarship or grant aid:</p>
<p>Columbia 50.4%
Dartmouth 50.0%
Cornell 48.4%
Penn 46.4%
Brown 41.9%</p>
<p>(Obviously, I’m counting as “full-pays” those students whose “need-based financial aid” consists solely of “self-help” and/or loans. IMO, these students are properly regarded as full-pays, because work-study and loans are just alternative ways of paying for college out of your own pocket.)</p>
<p>HYP are around 40% full-pays.</p>
<p>% of undergrads receiving need-based scholarship or grant aid:</p>
<p>Harvard 60.0%
Princeton 59.4%
Yale 56.0%</p>
<p>I would surmise this difference is not the result of a different socioeconomic composition at these two groups of otherwise similar schools, but mainly a reflection of a higher top end on “need-based” FA at the more heavily endowed HYP, i.e., a lot of students from families with incomes in the $180K-$200K range who get need-based FA at HYP but would be full-pays at non-HYP Ivies (and almost all other colleges). From the data, I’d assume somewhere around 10% of the students at HYP are in this category. The difference in FA policies would, of course, provide an additional powerful impetus (as if one were needed) for students in the $180K-$200K family income bracket to seek admission to HYP, and to attend if admitted. </p>
<p>And it’s not just recruited athletes, mini, though I have no doubt many of them benefit from this policy. It’s just one more feature that allows HYP to separate themselves from the “run-of-the-mill” Ivy pack.</p>
<p>Being faced with very similar situations, D1 is a senior at a SUNY school with a generous merit. S1 is is facing same prospect, accepted as a freshman to several privates but with no significant FA, 35-50k out of pocket at a minimum. He too will likely end up with a SUNY presidential. I cant spend my retirement, nor saddle them with the debt that would be required.</p>
<p>Penzy: when your kids go to pay for graduate school, they will thank you.</p>
<p>I know an intelligent hard-working 32 year old guy with a good job who was still living in a tiny apartment because of the crushing weight of $100,000 of college debt from an undergrad degree.</p>
<p>If a kid tries to push their parent to approve an unaffordable college, the parent should simply say: “So when I outlive my retirement savings, I’m sure it will be OK if I move in with you … and I’ll want the thermostat set at 79 degrees.”</p>
<p>I also found it is easier to convince your kid to pick an affordable college if you tell them they have to work during the school year if they pick the more expensive college.</p>
<p>We’re located in a large Midwest city. We know of several families in the $200,000 two-earner household income bracket were one spouse lost his/her job, is in his/her mid-50s, and facing financial uncertainty. Their kids are in HS or college. Some of those folks will never find a position that matches their prior salary. I’ve read several article which noted same: replacement job, if/when found, pays anywhere from 20% to 50% less in many cases. When you’re in your mid-50s, you’re not that go-getter kid with endless energy and available nights and weekends to crank out projects. Middle-aged middle-managers are often in a precarious employment situation, whether they know it or not.</p>
<p>I don’t think financial aid offices realize that even when families may appear financially successful on paper, their financial situation depends on job stability that’s no longer reliable in this employment market. Elizabeth Warren was dead-on right in her opinions on same, encapsulated in her book “Two-income Trap”.</p>
<p>MIT and Ivy have always had the best need base aid. But when we were looking, the online calculators for colleges were crude or nonexistent. It was fun to see the current improvements. Here’s a few datapoints from the Harvard calculator (example family of 4) </p>
<p>Gee, I just realized that I misread the original title and did add an unfortunate L in front of aid. Thought I had uncovered the secret after-hours version of CC. </p>
<p>"% of undergrads receiving need-based scholarship or grant aid:</p>
<p>Harvard 60.0%
Princeton 59.4%
Yale 56.0%</p>
<p>As already noted, much of the aid in the need-based category is not need-based at all. It’s made-up “need” that is part of the fiction they promote when they provide what is essentially a “merit-based” (or poundage-based - that has its own merit) discount. It has no relationship to the federal EFC calculators, nor to any rational measure of what parents are “prepared” to afford. It’s just a story they want you to believe.</p>
<p>@Colorado_Mom, I’m pretty sure your figures are right… but I was delighted to read them because I had a reason to run that calculation a couple weeks ago and was still walking around thinking “that can’t possibly be right”. </p>
<p>My two children are one grade apart so we were looking at two years of two kids in school… then our daughter came to us wanting to leave high school early and go to Bard College at Simon’s Rock (“The Early College”). There are many pros and cons outside the scope of this thread, but cons that struck me immediately were her losing out on three more AP courses and a chance to thereby save at least some tuition money wherever she went. That and the fear of having two kids in college, all four years. So I ran the numbers, and it works out that if the calculators are accurate, it would be slightly LESS costly for us to have them both in lockstep in all four years even if NONE of her AP courses carry over (which we are pretty sure will be the case at Simon’s Rock). Then came the realization that they might not all transfer over ay ANY school anyway and that odds were due to change in major/whatever she’d be unlikely to actually graduate in less than four years.</p>
<p>A fin aid book I picked up a weeks ago says people with twins are actually lucky as far as paying for college goes… the people who will probably actually pay more are ones who stagger their kids :(. Although I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way after 18 years of school trips at the same time, braces at the same time…</p>
<p>We still haven’t been able to get an answer on this–we have twins–using Colorado’s numbers above and say the EFC is $20K. Say they both got into Harvard–would each child pay $20K or would each child pay $10K? Since you do an FAFSA/NPC on each child, no one seems to know how that gets split, or ifay all.</p>
<p>SteveMA, we had two in college at the same time and based on Colorado’s number’s each twin’s EFC is $20,000. Each kid would pay $20,000 if Harvard based FA number’s on the EFC. </p>
<p>If you have one in college and your EFC is 30,000, you would think they would split the EFC in two but it is more of a 60/40 split. But since a meets need school uses the Profile, it is very hard to determine what the school would determine each twin’s contribution would be. They can and do use their own determination for each student’s FA.</p>
<p>I had one child in a meets need school and one in a state school which did not meet need. The state school child paid full price, no discount. The meets need child we paid approximately the EFC FAFSA amount for 2 children in college.</p>
<p>This is one of the most murky, complex and confusing aspects of FA and applying to college. Which is why I did not and would not apply Early Decision.</p>
I agree. In our situation (annual income + liquid assets 180K-225K/year) Y gave DD approx. $30K/4years and we paid Y approx. $185K/4years. Plus we probably spent an additional $75K/4years for the summer study in Paris, spring breaks, summer internships, trips home and back, and ……</p>
<p>Poetgrl is correct, technically my DD was a FA student at Y.</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure how I was misleading, as I agree. When Princeton crafted it’s no-loan strategy, it was designed to offer small (around $5,000) tuition discounts to relatively wealthy admits, as a way of sweetening the pot in keeping admits from turning them down and accepting merit money at the Vanderbilts of the world. And, at the same time, it was effective in increasing (for public consumption) the percentage of students who they said received “need-based” aid (except it wasn’t really need-based at all.)</p>
<p>Now, to be fair, they did also increase the number of Pell Grant recipients attending, from roughly 6.5% to roughly 9.5%, a significant increase, even if it doesn’t represent that many students.</p>
<p>Am I now safe to say that when someone questions others’ focus on getting into HYP that means that money really isn’t an issue for the questioner?</p>
<p>No. You are safe to say, “Please run the NPC at the college/university website, and see if the money will work for you.” There will always be some outliers for whom the money is not going to work, no matter how predictable, and generous, the scholarship and financial aid policies of college/university X are.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you mean. FAFSA EFC is split in half unless one child has income/assets. So if one child had 30k EFC then two would be 15k each. Unless you’re talking about how a college calculates in which case they’re free to do what they want.</p>
<p>Romani, that post-er refers to Profile EFC, which is roughly a 60/40 split rather than FAFSA’s 50/50 split. Of course, Profile schools are often secretive about their formulas, so it may not be that 60/40 one might expect based on the FAFSA EFC. And, of course, one student may have earned and/or saved more than the other, throwing yet another wrench into the conventional wisdom of how the EFC would be split.</p>