In the past I had thought that the Ivies net cost would be about the same. I’m running the calculators this morning and finding agreement among some but also some outliers. Yale and Princeton come out within $3k but Brown is almost $20k more. I’m using the same numbers for all. Oddly, the Brown MyTuition calculator is more in line with the numbers for Yale and Princeton.
Have others seen similar results? Does Brown really not give comparable aid relative to their costs? I’m wondering whether there is a glitch or whether the calculators are somehow not comparing apples to apples…
Yes, the conventional wisdom is that HYP give better aid than the other Ivys. None of my kids applied to Brown, but I can attest that in our experience with NPCs, the estimated net cost for Y and P was something like $10-12K less than the estimated cost for Cornell, and Y and P were the only schools (out of 20-25) for which the estimated net cost was actually less than our FAFSA EFC.
Yes, Brown does not appear to give comparable aid. From our experience, the NPC for Columbia and Yale was much lower than it was for Brown by about $9-10K.
For colleges that supposedly meet “full need”, the single biggest discrepancy in the amount of aid for most applicants comes from the consideration of home equity (in primary residence). Only about a dozen colleges or so don’t take into account home equity. The rest do (some fully, and others in more limited fashion based on income). Many relatively well-endowed colleges are in the latter group (including majority of Ivies, Northwestern, etc.)
@skieurope - No home equity involved so that’s not the issue - nor is it an HYP thing as even JHU comes out $12k cheaper.
I still wonder if the calculator itself is to blame in that the other schools aren’t updated but Brown’s is…
My kid may still apply as its one if his top schools - but money will definitely be a factor in the final decision. Finances are a bit up in the air for us right now so no idea what we will be able to afford come 2021.
[quote=“HMom16, post:7, topic:2796878”]
I still wonder if the calculator itself is to blame in that the other schools aren’t updated but Brown’s is…[/quote]
What’s to blame is that each school calculates institutional need-based aid in its own way, and you are seeing the result of how this impacts need-based aid offered by Brown. Comparing institutional need-based aid is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
When I ran numbers a couple of years ago for a seminar at D21’s school, I noticed big differences in how aid is calculated. I left the numbers exactly the same and ran the NPC for multiple colleges.
***Sorry I can’t quite get this to format no matter what I do. I input it in list form. So annoying.
FAMILY 1
$115,000 income
$75,000 non-protected investments
$0 home equity
1 child
$8,500 Princeton
$12,814 Smith
$12,964 Swarthmore
$13,014 Wake Forest
$20,712 Georgetown
$28,651 Brown
FAMILY 2
$115,000 income
$75,000 non-protected investments
$450,000 home equity
1 child
$8,500 Princeton
$13,317 Smith
$19,224 Swarthmore
$23,874 Wake Forest
$24,412 Georgetown
$45,809 Brown
So, big differences in how aid is calculated with and without home equity. At every income level, Brown was by far the most expensive (it’s why I contacted them).
I’ve now run the numbers for 20 schools using the same inputs for each. We have no real estate so equity is not a distinguishing factor. Brown is by far the most expensive Ivy and comes in at 16th for the list.
Yale University,
University of Utah,
Princeton University,
Case Western Reserve,
Trinity College,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Northeastern University,
University of Pennsylvania,
Johns Hopkins University,
Dartmouth College,
Cornell University,
University of Notre Dame,
University of Denver,
Bucknell,
University of Virginia,
Brown University,
RPI,
Lehigh University,
Lafayette College,
UC Boulder,
I can’t comment about the estimators, but the financial aid offered by Brown to S19 was much worse than that of Vanderbilt, Colgate and Emory. The difference was significant.
I did NPC comparisons using the same financial and family data all across the Ivy League and some of its peer institutions, but that was about three years ago when my son was going through the college application process. Unless the way each of these institutions calculate the FA has undergone a significant change, what I found was that Princeton and Harvard were the most generous followed by Yale and Stanford. If I recall correctly, Yale stood out among HYP for considering the home equity whereas HP did not. Still, though not as generous, both Yale and Stanford were competitively close enough to HP. They’d have to, I imagine, in order not to negatively impact the yield outcome.
Having a direct experience with Princeton’s FA now for three years, I can vouch for their FA practice matching their reputation and even beyond. When our financial circumstances changed drastically from two years ago to last year, Princeton surprised me out of the blue with a letter stating that they will use our last year’s income and assets as opposed to two years ago as they supposed to do. I was really taken aback by this. I didn’t ask for it, never even dreamed it was possible, yet they paid minute attention to individual financial circumstances to take a proactive decision and reached out to us. I was blown away by this most incredible gesture. I don’t know if Harvard or any other institutions would have done the same.
The families of Brown students have the highest income of all college students/families. Now it makes sense to me why this is true. They give out the worse financial aid. Families have to be rich to go there. I heard Dartmouth was a close second.
Brown does have the lowest endowment of all the Ivies. Maybe they can’t afford to give as much aid as other schools?
Princeton does have the highest endowment per student of all Ivies. I guess this is why they are the most generous?