I think sometimes with all the media articles and all the kids and parents here chatting and talking about merit money that sometimes the fact that many people are “full pay” gets lost or it gets assumed that “everyone” gets a tuition discount off the stated prices. I distinctly remember the late 2000s when merit money started decreasing. $15,000 per year merit scholarships suddenly were $10,000 and then $5,000 from certain “popular on CC” colleges for hunting for merit based tuition discounting. Sometimes the rhetoric just isn’t an accurate representation of what happens in the real world.
@gallentjill, those full pay percentages was a big concern for us when D applied. I basically told her not to bother. There are two facets to the issue ~~ not getting enough financial aid and being the poor kid amongst those that can afford more. She applied to several schools that had many affluent students and we talked alot about how she’d stack up when it came time to weekends, study abroad, and spending money for day to day.
In the end she’s done just fine, she has friends from work study that have finaid and friends who don’t and drive nice cars and travel Italy over Christmas. It hasn’t been an issue. If anything, its comical. Some of the kids moan about how much $$ their parents are spending and not liking their ROI…classic self-entitled stuff. Humble bragging. Not one of those students are in the top of their classes either.
That’s funny-- My kids were both full pay at pricey schools. But we are actually a frugal family: the kids shared a beat up 12 year old toyota to drive to school, they never had pricey clothes, etc. (come to think of it, that’s part of how we saved enough to afford full pay). My daughter said one of her roommates on fin-aid spent more at the local clothing boutiques than she did. She had a very modest monthly allowance from us that I don’t think she even fully spent. Anyway, I wouldn’t assume that “full pay” means jetting off to Switzerland for spring break 
I will be paying full for D2 
there were still decent merit packages out there, but very few in Cali schools of interest
The landscape is even worse than 3 yrs ago, with the older sibling
We’re paying in full for S. We knew that we would be paying full, so we planned for that since birth. S is thriving at Stanford - couldn’t be happier.
I think its good to have this information out there. There is definitely a misconception that everyone is getting merit or FA.
@doschocos thanks for posting the link; I read that article when it came out! However, there is one thing that I’m skeptical about, and it’s about the ranking for schools with the highest ratio of enrollment of the 1%…
According to the article, Wash.U. in St. Louis has 21.7% of its students that lived under a $630K+ salary…
21.7% of students were with families that earn more than $630K???
It’s so hard for me to believe that… Can someone please give me proof that this is really the case? That was the most shocking thing I read in that article. Thanks in advance!
@doschicos: “At schools with little to no merit aid, usually the majority are paying sticker.”
I believe it’s more around half on average, though it could vary from 40%-60% depending on the school.
@gallentjill: “I think its good to have this information out there. There is definitely a misconception that everyone is getting merit or FA”.
Well, do note that CC is pretty rarified company.
Note that
- The vast majority of college students attend publics (generally not terribly selective one’s) and the vast majority of those are in-state. So even if they may be full-pay, they’re not paying anything close to $70K a year. And at most publics even OOS costs aren’t close to $70K/year.
- Among privates, the very top tier don't give much merit money if at all, but roughly half their student body receive fin aid.
- But when you go farther down, merit money is more likely and increases (full-rides and even full-tuition scholarships tend to be tough to get) but schools at the level of CWRU or the CTCL LACs may have to be financially competitive with a flagship at in-state prices (this is more true outside the Northeast).
Add it all up and yes, only a small percentage of students are paying $70K/year.
@XCBikeSwimSleep:
"According to the article, Wash.U. in St. Louis has 21.7% of its students that lived under a $630K+ salary…
21.7% of students were with families that earn more than $630K???
It’s so hard for me to believe that… Can someone please give me proof that this is really the case? That was the most shocking thing I read in that article. Thanks in advance!"
That works out to roughly 375 kids a year. There are 3.5M American HS grads a year. Is that top one percentile by family income? Then there would be roughly 35K kids graduating from HS each year with those circumstances. Only 375 of them have to go to WashU. And that’s not counting Internationals (I don’t know if that breakdown includes them either).
Wow! I have some catching up to do. 
Percentage of Students receiving needs based grants (no loans included):
Colgate University–37% receive financial aid.
Northwestern University–44% receive financial aid.
University of Chicago–43% receive financial aid.
University of Pennsylvania–48% receive financial aid.
Swarthmore College–54% receive financial aid.
Columbia University–49% receive financial aid.
Harvard–55% receive financial aid.
Yale–50% receive financial aid.
Princeton University–60% receive financial aid.
MIT–60% receive financial aid
Duke University–43%
Dartmouth College–52%
Brown–44%
Cornell–45%
Stanford–47%
Williams College–50%
Amherst College–55%
Pomona College–56%
Rice University–38%
Wellesley College–63%
Vassar College–64%
Notre Dame–48%
.
Although 52% of students at NYU receive “financial aid”, it includes a substantial amount of loans which does not result in a discounted cost.
@publisher Thats an awful lot of full pay students. Far more then I expected.
My D has received acceptance of Fordham. The cost of attendance is 75,000/yr. Fordham offered 51,000/yr in grants, aid and scholarships. Our net costs are coming out to be appx 24K/yr. Our family contribution came out to be 37K/yr. She is split between several acceptances ( Duke 75K, Bentley 55K, Gtech 50K, RPI 45K - all Net per year) and not able to decide.
On pure financial perspective, it this good enough to consider Fordham ? I wish we knew about NMSC award right now.
I think at private selective it does seem about half get need financial aid and a small sliver (if any) receive merit aid.
I do think, however, at fairly non selective privates (those that accept 65% or more of students) there are a lot of merit scholarships that are actually ‘discounts’ b/c they can’t attract enough full pay students and also can’t meet 100% of need based aid. They are lowering their sticker price to fill their seats.
So, yes, lots of full pay students at highly selective privates but that’s a very small piece of the overall education pie, as an earlier post mentioned.
@XCBikeSwimSleep "According to the article, Wash.U. in St. Louis has 21.7% of its students that lived under a $630K+ salary…
21.7% of students were with families that earn more than $630K???
It’s so hard for me to believe that…"
I live in California, and it is not at all hard for me to believe that. Two-parent family with two lawyers or specialist doctors would cross $630K by the time they’re 50 (esp. if they had help from mom and dad or a small inheritance from grandma whose estate gets lots of help from Prop 13). You don’t even have to be college educated–some realtors I know make that easily. That’s why you have so many people on the California thread feeling bent out of shape when they make $175K and are struggling to pay for college because they don’t qualify for aid but haven’t saved enough. You can hate those $175K-ers, as many on CC do, or you can sympathize that many of them are hard-working people living very middle-class lives in a very inflated economy. The regional differences in income are not truly understood by the average American. That always seems to be the missing piece from these conversations about college costs.
Agree with @AlmostThere2018.
As I stated in post #28, at the top tier privates, roughly half receive fin aid or merit money and roughly half are full-pay, but go a little bit down and the majority receive money and a small minority are full pay. For example, Centre says that over 90% of their students receive some money from the school (roughly half get some sort of merit money).
At CWRU, out of 1309 freshmen, 703 received fin-aid grants and 384 who did not qualify for fin aid received merit money meaning 83% are not full-pay.
There’s also a regional component:
Merit money is more likely at non-big-city privates away from the 2 coasts.
Where do you live? I live in a suburb of NYC. Many people in my town work on Wall Street, where $630k or more is their annual bonus. (not my family). Single-breadwinner families at that income level include orthopedic surgeons, plastic surgeons, dermatologists, successful business owners, big-law partners (and some associates), high-level executive in a multi-national company, hospital executives, and of course hedge funders, investment bankers, and private equity financiers. Dual-income families at that income level can include two physicians (any specialty), two lawyers in big firms even if they aren’t partners, a teacher and a lawyer, a marketing VP in a multi-national company and a pharmaceutical sales rep. You get the idea. My nephew is in his early 30s and a mid-level executive at Google. He and his girlfriend, who also works at Google, are close to that level together.
I think it depends on what is considered top tier. Skidmore (#41 in LAC) only gives grants to 35%. 47% get any type of aid at all. Thats a lot of full pay students. Skidmore is an excellent school, but I’m not sure posters here on CC would consider it at the very top. Lots of full pay students at Brandeis, Lehigh, Lafayette, and Boston University. It looks like the full pay window extends to the group just below the very top as well.