Financial Aid

I keep seeing on here that Boston College’s financial aid is really bad. They claim to meet 100% of need and the NPC came out the same as some peer schools and a few better schools. Is financial aid really that bad? Our gross income is around 50-60k so I’m going to need a lot. The NPC came out affordable though. I just don’t understand why it has the reputation of giving horrible aid. I’m guessing it is students with incomes between 100k-200k who do not get anything, but can not afford 70k/year.

Apply and if accepted, you can compare offers.

There are two major differences in financial aid at BC: 1) BC does not offer merit aid (with the exception of a handful of Presidential scholarships); 2) BC counts home equity as an asset in its calculation of need.

Thus, BC gets a bad rap is in comparison to the schools ranked below it that generally provide merit money, so those colleges seem less expensive for families with incomes in the range that you mention.

BC also gets a bad rap in comparison to the need-based aid schools ranked above it since they generally cap the amount of home equity used in the calculation of need.