Financial Aid @ Harvard ??

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

Hey everyone, I’m an EA admit to the Harvard Class of 2022. I just got my financial aid decision today and my family didn’t qualify for as much aid as we had expected/hoped. Although my parents say that they’re willing to pay the cost, I’d feel horrible to burden them with such a heavy price tag. I’m planning on calling the financial aid office when they re-open after the holidays. Until then, I have a couple of questions that maybe you guys can answer!

  1. How does one appeal for more aid? How do I know if I would even be warranted in earning more aid?
  2. Do you think Harvard (or other expensive/prestigious private university) is “worth” the cost?
  3. Part of the FA offer is for me to get a term-time job. Can I get a paid job doing research (some type of biomedical research) at Harvard?
  4. Will paying this high tuition be an insurmountable detriment in potential study abroads or other costly opportunities? Or does Harvard work with students that are in situations like this one?

Thanks in advance.

2

First off, congratulations! Now that you’ve been accepted, the financial aid reality begins.

  1. Unless your parents financial situation has changed since submitting the FAFSA and CSS Profile, I would hold off on calling Harvard's Financial Aid Office, as you currently don't have any leverage. I would wait until your RD acceptances come in and see what other college's are offering. At that point -- in April -- if another peer school offers you BETTER financial aid based upon need (not need + merit), you can ask Harvard's FA office to review your aid based upon a better offer. Harvard may (or may not) increase your financial aid based upon that better offer.
  2. IMHO, if another competitive college such as Duke, UCLA, Rice, Amherst, Williams Johns Hopkins etc offers you better financial aid -- go there! Harvard is a wonderful school, but they don't hold the only magic key for future jobs. You can get just as good an education -- sometimes better -- at another college as you would at Harvard.
  3. In my children's experience, unless you have been granted federal work study (the US government pays Harvard to employ you -- and it says Federal Work Study on your financial aid letter), it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to find an on-campust term time job your freshman or sophomore year, as those jobs are based on seniority -- and junior and senior year students get priority. So your parents (or you) will have to come up with that term time job money for at least the first or first and second year of school.

4 Although Harvard works with students in terns of FA for study abroad, if you are not receiving as much FA money as you thought you would, chances are your FA for study abroad will also NOT be as much as you think.

3

@gibby stated everything important above, I did just want to also point out a couple extra things:

  1. I actually do know people who have successfully appealed their FA decision without a peer offer, a close friend of mine did so when their financial aid was a little lower than they were expecting/hoping for based on the financial aid calculator. I would recommend checking the calculator to make sure you do in fact qualify for as much aid as you think you do before speaking to the office (but remember it is an estimate only - though it was a fairly accurate one for my aid at least). In appealing, they also submitted additional information about their circumstances which they had not been able to include in their original financial aid application and were given a little bit more when aid was recalculated. If you were to simply ask for more without providing any new insight or information though, or a higher peer school offer, it probably won't work.
  2. This is hard to say. For me, I was given so much financial aid (almost a full ride) that attending Harvard was **far** cheaper than attending literally any other school I was interested in so it was an easy choice for me to make. I think it would have been much more difficult for me had I been asked to pay closer to the full price. I think @gibby put it well in their answer, there are many good schools out there - don't just go to Harvard for the prestige/name, go because you genuinely love it. I recommend going to Visitas if you are on the fence to get a feel for what the college is really like.
  3. Yes, there are paid research jobs. However research jobs are relatively difficult to come by in freshman/sophomore year as you often have not learned enough material to be useful in many lab settings and older students are much more likely to get it. Also note, you do not **need** to complete a term-time work expectation in Harvard's aid program, but Harvard includes what it expects you would likely earn and be able to put towards your education if you did so. I was surprised to hear it was difficult for @gibby's children to find any job on-campus in freshman/sophomore year however, almost all of my friends who really wanted some kind of job were able to, either working in Widener or Lamont, working at the Harvard Shop, HSA, tutoring, Dorm Crew, or TFing classes they took in freshman year.
4

The CSS Profile has a section for “special circumstances.” This would cover things like a parent losing a job, unexpected health expenses, a sibling with a special need, a natural disaster, that kind of thing.

Harvard’s aid is very generous and pretty transparent for most students. If your family makes under $65k it is free, under $150k and you pay 10% and there is sometimes aid over that figure, but $150k is the figure quoted by the department.

There is nothing wrong with meeting with a financial aid office. I did that for one of my kids at another Ivy that is not as generous. I basically told them I did not want to encourage my son to say yes if we could not pay for the whole 4 years, and I also said I was concerned about grad school. They had some helpful things to say, and were very welcoming. Just tell the Financial Aid office that finances are a key part of your decision and you want to see how it will play out over the 4 years before you decide.

I would not have high hopes about negotiating an increase though. I would expect advice on how to make it possible, what jobs might be available (I agree with Telluric on this) and so on. And no, you are not obligated to work; those potential earnings are simply charged to you if you don’t.

Summer jobs may be able to help with expenses. One of mine helped pay tuition because his area of study offered good internships every summer. Research assistant positions are sometimes available depending on your field.

Harvard is a great experience but there are other schools out there that also offer a great experience.

You are not the only young person who has come on here feeling badly about the cost. Sometimes, it turns out, those feelings are not warranted and the parents aren’t aware the kid is struggling with them. I strongly suggest you raise you concerns with your parents. They may reassure you so that you feel better about this expense. Harvard and some of the Ivies have incredible financial aid and you are unlikely to go elsewhere for less, unless a state or other school offers a full ride for merit.

Congratulations on getting in and my wish for you is that you can attend Harvard after talking with your parents and feeling better about the cost.

If you and your parents decide otherwise, it will work out fine too. But it does sound as if your family can pay and sitting down with your parents may very well help you accept that.

5

You’ve been given excellent advice above and I’ll add that, from our experience, calling a FA office to voice your concerns is a good idea. Our situation was that our son was attending and receiving fairly generous aid from Princeton, which “meets full need” when our daughter was accepted ED by Duke, which also “meets full need”, but isn’t known as being as generous as Princeton.

When we saw Duke’s FA offer we found it shockingly low. I called Duke FA and explained that our daughter might be unable to attend because of the low aid amount; they promised to take a look at the situation; and they called back within a couple days explaining that they’d made a mistake in their calculations and significantly increased their offer.

So, in my opinion, if your FA offer was less than what you expected, assuming your expectations were realistic, then a call to the office could help straighten things out.

Congratulations, and good luck!

6

Thank you, all!

1 Like
7

I’m not usually known for sugar-coating my words, so I’ll tell it straight. The short answer is no, it’s not worth the cost. A bachelors is a bachelors in the professional world regardless of whether it comes from Duke or North Texas, and a master’s from any school will squash it. The sticker price of a bachelors degree at Duke is 250k. Certainly, there are grants and endowments available to reduce that cost, but that’s as much most medical schools! There’s no rational reason for your parents to take out a 100k+ loan for a bachelors degree. I would go straight for the scholarship. This way, everyone wins. You get an education and parents can save their money and go on a cruise :slight_smile:

8

I will also not sugar coat it. It is worth every penny you spend on it. A Harvard degree is a once in a lifetime experience.

  1. It doesn’t hurt to go to the financial aid office. Just make an appointment and go see them. They are more than happy to review all offers.

  2. Study abroad does not cost more if you go to Harvard. Most kids however don’t do study abroad at Harvard. Harvard will even pay for study abroad during the summer in foreign countries if you meet their financial need criteria.

  3. Yes you can get a paid job doing research . There are a number of them at Harvard

9

I will also not sugar coat it. An education at Harvard IS NOT worth every penny you spend on it, as Harvard DOES NOT hold the monopoly on once in a life time experiences. Nor does Harvard hold the monopoly on getting their graduates the best jobs after graduation. You can get just as good an education (maybe even better) and be just as successful by attending Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Williams, Pomona, UChicago and any number of other colleges.

  1. It doesn’t hurt to go to the financial aid office, although be forewarned: Harvard will only match Need-Based financial aid. So, in certain circumstances, a college such as Duke or Vanderbilt, which offers a combination of Need-based and Merit Aid, will handsomely beat Harvard’s FA.

  2. Relatively speaking, very few Harvard students study abroad. If I’m not mistaken, less than 10% of Harvard College students actually study abroad – that’s because 90% of students want that “Harvard on-campus experience” for all four years. That said, if you decide to study abroad, it does not cost more.

  3. Yes. you can get a paid job doing research – not really though as a freshman and sophomore, as those jobs tend to go to upperclassmen.

10

@gibby thanks for your response. What’s your source for “less than 10% of Harvard College students actually study abroad”? Harvard’s website reports that 60% of Harvard students experience some sort of “international experience.”

I’m also deciding between a possible full-ride to my state school and Harvard. What would your recommendation be in this scenario?

11

Whatever you school you go to, what you get out of it is what you choose to make of it. I know so many people that have had amazing opportunities and gotten an awesome education at state schools. Especially if you are a high-achieving student, you can stand out at a state school (unlike at Harvard, where every single student is high-achieving). In my mind, when it comes down to financial options, I would go for the full-ride to your state school. But, it is your choice. Good luck!

12

International experience includes spending the winter break skiing in the Spanish Pyrenees, doing a summer internship in Geneva with CERN, volunteering to save the Rain Forest in Peru, returning home to Seoul, among others. In other words, international experiences ≠ study abroad.

I don’t know the exact percentage of students who study abroad during the academic year, but I’d say @gibby 's number is, if anything, high (or includes summer abroad). My experience tells me that more students study abroad during the summer than during the academic year, but even combined, the percentage is not high, for the reasons @gibby mentioned. Regardless, if one does study abroad during the academic year, as mentioned earlier, it does not cost anything additional, and FA awards are also applied to summer study abroad.

13

See @skieurope’s post above and this Harvard Political Review article dated February 19, 2015: http://harvardpolitics.com/harvard/studying-abroad-harvard-overcoming-fear-missing/

The quality of state school education varies widely, but if the choice were between paying the FULL-FARE at Harvard or having a FULL-RIDE to UVA, William & Mary, UCLA, UMich, UNC, Georgia Institute of Technology etc, my advice would be to take the full ride at a state college.

14
Thanks @gibby . I figured you would be able to find the data.
15

Sugar coating or no, it is opinion not fact whether Harvard is worth the price tag or not. I happen to agree with @collegedad13: it’s worth it. Sounds like your parents think so too.

I also disagree with @Gibby about whether It is possible to find on-campus paying jobs in your first two years: neither of my children had trouble finding lots of paying on-campus jobs, and they did not qualify for federal work study aid. I believe that their experience is more recent than his student’s experience, who graduated 5 years or so ago. Please correct me if I am wrong, Gibby.

It might be hard to find a job in a bio-chem lab as a freshman, but you also might be surprised at what is offered to a go-getter passionate student who politely inquires about a job opportunity.

16

@gibby was referring specifically to paying research jobs (which was the OP’s question), and I agree with his comment that it will be hard for a fresh or sophomore to find. Finding other types of paid jobs on-campus will be fairly easy.

17

Actually if you work in summer, lots of companies pay 1000 or more per week. So in 10 weeks you can earn pretty good. One can win numerous scholarships and you do not have to work in campus and do the activities that you want to pursue.

Harvard aid is most generous on the basis of need as they do not even look home equity. So is YP.

18

Thanks again everyone for your insight.

@skieurope I’ve heard Harvard students can go to MIT to do research. Any idea how common this is, and if you think it’s a practical option for me?

Pertaining outside scholarships, I recently learned the following from Harvard’s website:
“If you have outside awards that exceed your term-time & summer work expectation, the remaining amount would replace an equal amount of Harvard scholarship… Since outside awards are additional resources that reduce your financial need, they cannot be used to replace your parent contribution.”

I understand that Harvard wants to allocate its aid to the neediest students, but I find this policy frustrating because it seems to prevent families like mine from being able to help themselves. And I also know that this is a policy that many schools participate in.

Is there any point in applying for outside scholarships (at least for scholarships that would exceed my "term-time & summer work expectation) since it seems that this policy would essentially take that earned money away?

19

Thanks, all, for the insight.

@skieurope I’ve heard that Harvard students can go to MIT to do research (as well as take classes). Do you have any idea how common it is for H students to do research there, and if it’d be a practical option for most?

I recently learned about this FA policy on the H website:

“If you have outside awards that exceed your term-time & summer work expectation, the remaining amount would REPLACE an equal amount of Harvard scholarship … Since outside awards are additional resources that reduce your financial need, they cannot be used to replace your parent contribution.”

I understand that Harvard (and the many other schools that participate in this policy) want to grant aid to whom they perceive to be the neediest of students. However, its frustrating for a family like mine, since the policy seems to prevent us from helping ourselves. Can someone who’s cognizant of this policy explain the rationale behind it? And is there any point for me to apply for large scholarships (specifically ones that will exceed my "term-time & summer work expectation) since the money will essentially be taken away?

If I’ve interpreted the meaning of this policy incorrectly, please correct me. Thanks.

20

I imagine the policy is in place because of Ivy League Conference Rules which, among other things, stipulate . . .

As all students – both athletes and non-athletes – must be treated equally, once a student’s “need” is calculated, the school is prohibited from offering a student MORE than their calculated need-based aid. So, when a student brings in outside awards that exceed need, dollar-for-dollar amounts are then deducted from a Harvard scholarship money.

So in terms of Harvard and other Ivy League schools, there is no point in applying for large scholarships that will exceed your term-time employment, summer employment expectation and one-time allowance for a computer freshman year.