<p>In general, how much money should a middle-class family expect from Duke?</p>
<p>(My parents make ~130K. I have no idea what our assets are and I haven't used the net price calculators yet. I'm the only child who's gonna be in college, but my parents have to support my sibling and his future high school too, where my parents will also get financial aid.)</p>
<p>Based on my limited experience, Duke’s financial aid can surpass one’s expectations. With a FAFSA expected family contribution of 5k, I received 56k of financial aid plus 2k worth of work based learning.</p>
<p>Why haven’t you used the net price calculator yet? The tool will give you a very good estimate of your cost of attendance.</p>
<p>Oh wow! Is it okay if I ask what your parents’ income is? I just heard many horror stories about Duke’s financial aid not being very generous, especially to the middle class</p>
<p>Just to let you know $130k in yearly salary is not middle class. The median household income in the U.S. is around $45,000. $130k puts you in the top 10% of all households - I wouldn’t say that’s in the “middle.” Having said that, you could certainly still get some financial aid, but it’s hard to give you any ballpark figure when you have no idea of your family’s assets. Those will play a large part. Duke was personally very generous to me. I would echo LmaoZedong’s suggestion of using the net price calculator. I’ve found Duke to be more generous than most schools, but certainly below schools like HYPSM and about on par with the non-HYP Ivies and better than schools like JHU/Northwestern/WashU. YMMV as it’s certainly on a case-by-base basis and different schools make the calculations differently.</p>
<p>I agree with bluedog about Duke’s generosity level and being on par with the lower Ivies and others right below HYP. </p>
<p>While assets can make an impact if they are very, very high - keep in mind that the financial aid formulas are primarily income driven. As a rule of thumb, given a “normal” level of assets, a good ballpark number for EFC is about 25-30% of income (AGI plus other untaxed income). So, for an income of $130K, you’d be looking at an EFC in the range of $40K. In addition to that, parental assets are assessed at about 5% and student assets at 25%. So that’s a good starting point for you. As discussed, you’ll get a much better picture by just plugging your family’s numbers into Duke’s net price calculator.</p>
<p><a href=“Net Price Calculator”>Net Price Calculator;
<p>Juvenis - My mother is widowed and works part-time at the local university for approximately $20k a year. I think it’s very likely that Duke’s fin aid office took this into consideration.</p>
<p>For my financial aid package, I got a grant of a little under 25k, 5k in loans, and 2k in work study. My parent’s income is around 140k a year, so you’ll probably get something similar to mine. I do have a sibling in college though. Duke said my family’s EFC was about 28k.</p>