<p>"Except for those with very high assets, families earning $60,000 to $100,000 will have the $36,030 tuition waived next year. Some aid will also be available to wealthier families."</p>
<p>"Stanford will give free tuition to most undergraduates from families earning less than $100,000 a year."</p>
<p>Who exactly falls into these parameters? I guess it goes for most financial aid requirements, which I have a question about:</p>
<p>What if your parents are retired and do not bring in that kind of money via a salary? Would I still be eligible? Or does investments, social security, and other benefits come into play?</p>
<p>Investments come into play. I believe Stanford allows $250K in investments as ‘typical’ to benefit from this plan. And they do consider home equity which some, like Harvard, don’t. Money in formal retirement accounts like IRAs and 401K’s don’t count but pensions and other income do.</p>
<p>I don’t think there are 10 colleges in the country that offer the kind of fantastic aid that Stanford is. All such colleges are highly competitive, accepting about 7-12% of applicants, and most of their applicants are outstanding.</p>
<p>My mistake. I meant that the parameters of fitting into financial aid as described by hmom5 such as investments and retirement accounts that may add up to more than 100k would disqualify you in this instance. I realize this is rare aid given, but my question was that if I were to question myself to fit in aid- at any school, I should first add up all of the retirements accounts, investments, etc. to see if i qualify. Correct? For any school?</p>
<p>I think you might be getting income and assets mixed up. </p>
<p>For instance when S talks about people making 60-100k, they are referring to income–which includes not just salary, but everything else that goes into your AGI, such as retirement benefits (pensions and annuities), interest and dividends on investments, and I believe SS (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). They also add back in any untaxed income (eg. pretax donations to retirement accounts, untaxed SS). That’s the first step in assessing how much FA they will give you.</p>
<p>The second step is to look at your total assets such as investments and home equity; this is the 250k that hmom5 referred to.</p>
<p>So for S, if your parents had an income of 80k and they had assets of 100k, then you would receive the full tuition waiver; however, if they had an income of 80k and assets of 500k, then S would reduce your waiver according some formula.</p>
<p>Remember too…the FIRST hurdle for Stanford financial aid is to be accepted to Stanford. Stanford accepts about 10% of students who apply…meaning 90% do not get accepted. In that 90% are some very very qualified applicants. So…apply, but do have other financially viable options just in case Stanford doesn’t work out. Their generous financial aid isn’t worth a nickel if you don’t get accepted there first.</p>
<p>investments are definitely considered, along with other benefits. unless you keep a lot of hidden cash stashed in a deep underground vault that nobody knows about that the government can’t tax :p</p>