HUGE Discrepancy Between Harvard and Princeton Financial Aid Class of 2022, RD (

Here’s the gist of my story: I was checking my financial aid info last night and I realized that the difference between Princeton’s and Harvard’s offers was over $20k (which makes a huge difference for my family). Princeton’s was higher. This leads to me a few questions:

  1. Did I do something wrong on Harvard’s application? I went into my portal and checked to make sure my financial application was noted as complete (which it was).

  2. Does anybody know why this is happening? I thought Harvard was supposed to have the best financial aid packages.

  3. Has anybody else had a similar case?

  4. Should I appeal Harvard’s offer and if so, any guidance and/or tips?

Thank you so, so much for all of your help.

Is Harvard your top choice for some reason? If not…just go to Princeton.

If you want to talk to Harvard, contact them and see what they will do.

Any chance your parent(s) are divorced/remarried? Because Harvard and Princeton treat this very differently in terms of whose incomes they use.

I think schools like H will match other NEED-based offers from PEER schools…and P would be a peer…

You might want to share Princeton’s offer with the Harvard FA Office and ask if they’d match. You have nothing to lose by doing so. If they match, then you’d only have to consider non-financial reasons for attending one or the other. If they don’t match, then go to Princeton. Easy decision as I wouldn’t pay a $1 more for Harvard over Princeton.

However as thumper said, Harvard and Princeton both treat non custodial parents differently. If Op’s parents are divorced and custodial parent has remarried, Princeton does not consider the non custodial parent, where Harvard will.

In our case, Harvard offered was less than Yale about 500 dollars, but Harvard matched very quickly without any question asked.

I think matching $500 would be a little different than matching $20,000…

Also, are either of the OPs parents self employed?

Also, did the net price calculators show that big a difference when you ran them before applying? If not, which school gave an actual offer that differed greatly from the net price calculator?

“I thought Harvard was supposed to have the best financial aid packages.”

I would not assume that.

I’m going to bet that Harvard will match Princeton’s even if there wasn’t a mistake made. Harvard wants that yield > 80% and 80K isn’t an issue.

Congrats on getting accepted at both.

If you ask Harvard to match, be sure to ask that they will apply the same aid process for all four years - that is, if your family situation remains the same next year, they won’t apply their regular formula and ask you for $20K more next year, etc.

Last year my D asked Columbia to match her Princeton award and they did rather quickly - took them about 24 hours to respond. Their updated award notification showed the expected award for all 4 years including Columbia’s estimate of cost increases those 4 years with the caveat of relatively static Family finances.

Harvard is among the most generous but definitely not the most generous. I’d say Princeton is the more generous of the two lately. It’s not that surprising in a way since Princeton has a much larger endowment per student.

Thank you so, so much for all your input. My parents have been married since before my birth, so I don’t think that was an issue.

I checked the net price calculator and I got roughly the same number (about $300 discrepancy) from them, so I’m not too sure what’s going on. . .

I’ll call and see if I can get something arranged.

Well…at least th NPC amount was consistent with your award.

Is either parent self employed?

If Harvard really IS your top choice…contact them and tell them so…and that your net cost T Princeton is lower (that’s correct…right…the NET cost is lower)…by whatever the amount is.

Maybe they will match the Princeton award.

Otherwise…go to Princeton. I hate to say this…but this is really a first world problem if there was one!

Just a point of semantics: Harvard will not match Princeton. When there is an FA discrepancy between Harvard and its peers (of which Princeton is certainly one), they will ask you to send them a copy of the FA offer, and then Harvard will crunch the numbers again. Unless there is something not readily apparent from this post, $20K is a huge difference, and I would expect the gap to narrow. But the first step is to contact Harvard. Good luck.

@thumper1 Sorry, I misworded. The estimates I received from Princeton and Harvard were EXTREMELY similar, however, their actual offers were totally different.

Well…contact Harvard…"

Good luck.

And let us know where you land. Either school is terrific.

If Harvard’s FA amount is vastly lower than its NPC estimate, then it owes an explanation. Harvard uses CSS while Princeton uses its own, and Harvard likely includes certain assets in the calculation that Princeton excludes.

Was Harvard’s actual net price much higher than its NPC estimate?