Rice: 37% all undergraduates, 45% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=227757#finaid
Amherst: 39% all undergraduates, 44% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=164465#finaid
You can also check the school’s common data set. For Amherst, 273 Frosh out of 471 received some need-based aid. (see Section H.)
https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/H%2520Financial%2520Aid_1.pdf
Wow! That’s high. I got an impression from Hanna’s post that nearly everyone is getting some merit or need at non-ivy private schools.
^^the top privates like Amherst (& Williams & Swat) could easily fill their class with full payors if they wanted. Heck, they could raise tuition and full payors would not blink an eye.
Or, drop down the food chain. Less than half of students at NYU receive need -based aid.
Students with no grant or scholarship aid at a sampling of other non-Ivy private schools:
Kalamazoo: 4% all undergraduates, 1% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=170532#finaid
Rose Hulman: 4% all undergraduates, 2% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=152318#finaid
Earlham: 10% all undergraduates, 3% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=150455#finaid
St. Olaf: 10% all undergraduates, 8% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=174844#finaid
Oberlin: 16% all undergraduates, 14% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=204501#finaid
Sarah Lawrence: 27% all undergraduates, 21% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=195304#finaid
Santa Clara: 29% all undergraduates, 30% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=122931#finaid
San Diego: 31% all undergraduates, 19% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=122436#finaid
San Francisco: 35% all undergraduates, 23% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=122612#finaid
Carleton: 35% all undergraduates, 41% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/id=173258#finaid
Hawaii Pacific: 41% all undergraduates, 9% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=141644#finaid
University of Southern California: 41% all undergraduates, 42% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=123961#finaid
New York University: 45% all undergraduates, 49% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=193900#finaid
Reed: 52% all undergraduates, 45% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=209922#finaid
Boston University: 54% all undergraduates, 53% frosh: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=164988#finaid
“Wow! That’s high. I got an impression from Hanna’s post that nearly everyone is getting some merit or need at non-ivy private schools.”
Re-read Hanna’s posts. She specifically states that full pay is common only at elite private schools. Both Rice and Amherst would qualify as elite private schools. Non-Ivy does not equal non-elite.
In other words, at the most selective, most sought after schools there are plenty of people who are willing to pay full price for their kids to attend. This is not the case at less selective, less popular schools so the less popular schools have to give discounts to entice attendance. Makes sense.
Amherst has need based financial aid for very high parental incomes, similar to Harvard’s $250K a year or so (obviously depending on assets etc). So many of those 273 frosh could come from $200K+ families getting some help.
View the following link to the May 16 “Carletonian” student newspaper article outlining how Carleton College has established need-based aid “guardrails,” with the aim of enrolling 30 percent in in-coming classes from the “middle class.” Middle class is now defined as incomes between $42,000 and $170,000, as cited in the article. This is Carleton’s attempt to avoid creating a socioeconomic barbell effect, wherein the vast majority of students are either low-income or high-income student and few are deemed to be middle class:
https://apps.carleton.edu/carletonian/?story_id=1716185&issue_id=1716179
nevertheless, nearly half of Carleton’s students are full pay.
https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/ira/assets/CDS_2017_2018_completed.pdf
I know it is popular to blame “student loans” as the cause of high tuition, but that just doesn’t seem plausible. bAsed on what I read, the amount allowed per student over four years is still only $28,000 and has been since 2011. That is also the median student loan amount per student. Tuition, however, has gone up substantially since 2011. However, the average private school tuition room and board has gone up over 14% in that time. If loans are the problem, why haven’t the loan amount increase?
Plus, some students that get “aid” are getting a nominal amount such as a couple of thousand when compared to a $60K+ bill.
Are the Stafford loans considered “aid” in these calculations? Just the subsidized one? Both unsub and sub? Neither one?
The Common Data Set appears to exclude Stafford Loans that are NOT subsidized from its definition of institutional aid. See section H2 of the Common Data Set form to view how these are treated.
Thanks, Minnesota! I was too lazy to look 
So, at a school that does NOT meet full need, there could be a large percentage of students who have the max amount of sub and unsub Stafford, but no other aid. Perhaps they’d qualify for a grant at meets-full-need colleges, but at the one they chose, the sub loan is the most they can get. I would almost want to classify these people as full pay. They will eventually, with loan repayment, be paying the full amount.
@bluebayou @MinnesotaDadof3 Carleton was not going to look like a barbell, nor are any top colleges. They don’t actually admit very many low income students at all. It looks like they only have about 70 Pell grant eligible students in most freshman classes and that will include a number of middle-class families making less than $50,000. Most of that financial aid is going to middle-lass families. I will be benefiting from this, so I’m not complaining. But the idea that there are a lot of truly poor kids going to top schools is just not true. Poor kids and families rarely have the resources to get themselves to the point that they can even think of applying.
“I got an impression from Hanna’s post that nearly everyone is getting some merit or need at non-ivy private schools.”
Both Rice and Amherst are Ivy equivalents.
It’s not as if people only are willing to pay for schools in a certain sports league and not for comparable schools outside that sports league.
@brantly – you can get a little beter sense from the CDS by also looking at number of students receiving grants, average grant amount --and also looking at the average loan amounts. If average loan amounts are lower, it would indicate that the colleges are providing stronger grant-based aid. Obviously an “average” is just that — and doesn’t tell you overall distribution of aid – but it at least gives you an overall sense of whether a significant number of students are getting strong grant aid.
Absolutely true. Pell % is a great measure of low income (which does as you point out include some $50k/yr families which is something near the national median). Even the meet-need colleges that aggressively pursue low income students generally have 20% or less Pell-eligible students, with a very small handful of exceptions like Columbia and the UCs.