<p>Middle class families ARE in need of financial aid to afford private colleges. However, consider that the vast majority of students who would qualify for admission to schools such as HYPSM come from families with incomes above the average, simply because, except in cases of kids with incredible natural drive and talent and luck, it takes financial resources to create a worthy applicant to those schools. So there are a disproportionate number of applicants from families which can afford private schools, or tutors, or standardized test courses, or music/dance/figure skating/art coaches or trips to the nationals in some such event, etc. If HYPSM wanted to fill their classes with only people who could afford the sticker price, they could do so easily.</p>
<p>However, fortunately they prefer classes that better reflect our cultural and economic spectrum, so they provide generous financial aid to students who are admitted but cannot afford the school, which definitely includes anybody at or near the current middle income in the US. I don’t know the real numbers, but I would guess that the admissions offices of these schools process some very large multiple of qualified applications from potential students above the middle income line compared to those below it.</p>