<p>False. S2 who finished in the top 10% in HS is paying (read: his are parents are paying) full fare at an in-state NJ (read: expensive) public college. Loans, yes. Aid, no.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Full sticker plus constant pleas for donations!<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Made me laugh, hmom!</p>
<p>Sticker price here, too, and what a price it is! So far they haven't had the nerve to ask for donations, or maybe H just throws it right in the trash.</p>
<p>A really interesting experiment is to go look at the ipeds data for schools and see the number of students who get NO financial aid. I pulled up some representative schools, to give the broad picture. The differences between various categories is pretty stunning. BTW, there is someplace where almost no one place full sticker price, Drew University!</p>
<p>College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics</p>
<p>Selective LACs that meet full need and have little or no merit $:</p>
<p>Amherst 43%
Middlebury 51%
Bates 62%
Swarthmore 51%
Williams 54%</p>
<p>Big endowement U's</p>
<p>MIT 16%
Harvard 23%
Princeton 45%
Yale 31%</p>
<p>LACs that compete via merit $</p>
<p>Gettysburg 25%
Clark University 15%
Muhlenberg 23%
Rhodes 13%
Hobart and Wm Smith 23%
Drew University 1% [!]</p>
<p>hmom5-I feel your pain. We had a sticker X 3 overlap for 3 semesters. Thankfully, one graduated in December and one will finish up in May. When writing the checks I had to keep repeating to myself, "I feel thankful we're in a position to do this, I feel thankful we're in a position to do this." It kept me from convulsing! LOL</p>
<p>does anyone know why the numbers marathonman posted diverge so significantly compared to published cds data for some national universities?</p>
<p>for example, williams claims to have offered financial aid to 269 of 539 freshmen last fall, nearly 50% of the class. this is comparable to the 46% on aid from the college navigator site. </p>
<p>in contrast, yale claims to have offered financial aid to 611 of 1319 freshmen last fall, about 46% of the class, but the college navigator data claims that 69% of students receive financial aid. (the harvard and mit data seems similarly off; princetons looks to be more or less correct.)</p>
<p>in other words, williams offered financial aid to a larger percentage of its freshmen class than yale but came out looking much worse in the ies data. what gives?</p>
<p>Some schools include loans, work study as financial aid, providing misleading information. Only the standardized CDS reports provide an accurate comparison as it specifically identifies need based and merit based grant aid. </p>
<p>So the actual percentages of students receiving no need based grants at big endowment Us are:</p>
<p>MIT 40.3%
CalTech 40.85%
Harvard 49.37%
Princeton 49.98%
Dartmouth 50.13%
Columbia 51.01%
Chicago 53.01%
Stanford 56.38%
Yale 57.59%
Brown 58.46%
Cornell 61.72%
Penn 62%
Duke 62.09%</p>
<p>It sounds pretty confusing. Is financial aid loans or grants? Is there private aid involved and does that count? Is their private aid at the university from an endowed scholarship? I find the term financial aid to be a useless one. Just said loans, grants or scholarships.</p>
<p>I did a little digging; CDS definitions require the schools to count what most of us would think of as standard financial aid: grants, work study, and loans.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Need-based aid: College-funded or college-administered award from institutional, state, federal, or other sources for which a student must have financial need to qualify. This includes both institutional and noninstitutional student aid (grants, jobs and loans).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ipeds uses a broader definition that includes things like veterans benefits and employee tuition benefits</p>
<p>
[quote]
Grants, loans, assistantships, scholarships, fellowships, tuition waivers, tuition discounts, veteran's benefits, employer aid (tuition reimbursement) and other monies (other than from relatives/friends) provided to students to meet expenses. This includes Title IV subsidized and unsubsidized loans made directly to students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I can see why the Ipeds figure would be interesting to those making educational policy, but it's sure not the figure that most CC readers want in order to compare how generous prospective schools might be with financial aid. And I still find the disparity between merit and nonmerit LACs really striking.</p>
<p>By comparing percentages, how is it possible to tell that one school is more generous than the other without controlling for income level of the student body? Perhaps MIT is less stingy with need-based grants than Duke, or perhaps the schools have exactly the same need policy but more of the students at Duke come from families with higher incomes.</p>
<p>Lunar eclipse:</p>
<p>One anecdote: A young acquaintance of mine applied to Harvard, MIT, Princeton. He did not get into Harvard. Princeton offered him $7k per year more than MIT. He went to Princeton.</p>
<p>As for the OP: I must be one of the "nobody." I paid two sets of full sticker price. Which does not mean that I paid the full costs of educating two kids.</p>
<p>There are two types of subsidies taking place. First, the schools via their endowment income and grants subsidizes all undergraduate education. Second, parents who pay full price subsidize the tuition of kids whose parents have lower income and/or lower savings. The second subsidy can be understood is an additional, hidden progressive tax, largely on income, though I think that the system the universities use penalizes middle-income people who have saved relative to middle-income people who have not. Put another way, imagine that a college calculated how much it actually received from parents. For some that would be $50K, for some $28K, for some $0K, etc. Divide the sum of tuition income by the number of students. The schools would charge that amount as tuition. Then they would charge higher income and/or higher savings parents enough to reduce the tuition for lower income and/or lower savings parents. That increment would be the progressive tax.</p>
<p>That's how I see it....the Robin Hood principle!</p>
<p>
[quote]
First, the schools via their endowment income and grants subsidizes all undergraduate education.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This would be generally true of high-endowment private colleges and universities and of state colleges and universities. But there are privately operated colleges and universities that live off of tuition revenues for almost all expenses. I tend not to shop for those.</p>
<p>So percentage of full pays are higher at Yale than at Princeton? Is that what these numbers mean? <em>Being rather math challenged I have to hear this in words</em></p>
<p>
[quote]
At our graduation ceremony last year, they asked graduates to stand, if they were receiving any scholarship money from the college they were planning on attending.
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</p>
<p>Wow, that's one of the most tasteless things I've ever heard anybody recount happening.</p>
<p>But back to our originally scheduled programming.....twins starting freshman year this fall, we're paying full fare on both. In our next life, we're blowing it all on cotton candy.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So percentage of full pays are higher at Yale than at Princeton?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes. Around 58% vs 50%.</p>
<p>Harvard counts outside scholarships when calculationg "students receiving financial aid". Thus if student was awarded a small local scholarship ($500._, but parents are paying the other $49,500.) the he/she is counted as FA student.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Harvard counts outside scholarships when calculationg "students receiving financial aid".
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Still, the percentage of student receiving Harvard funded need based scholarship aid is over 50%.</p>
<p>There is still a surprising amount of wealth at these schools for all of the aid initiatives. It will be very interesting to see how the numbers do or don't change this year.</p>
<p>Also interesting to me is the schools like Bates. These good but not top LACs are the richest schools in the Country.</p>