<p>I saved $200,000 for my kids' education education. And then 9/11 brought about the failure of my H's business and we had to take all that money just to make sure the business did not fail completely. We couldn't go bankrupt because we would have lost our house to creditors. So, out went the kids' college fun. I was sick about it.</p>
<p>Through some miracle, both got into wonderful schools that meets 100% of need so each was able to go to his/her first choice college.</p>
<p>However, had things worked out differently, I would have been happy to spend every single penny of their education. It's the most important thing to me.</p>
<p>Thanks, Barnard and Williams for helping us make these dreams come true.</p>
<p>This highlights why it's best to not even get into answering questions like "how is the financial aid at Acme University?" except in the most general sense.</p>
<p>The variations from family to family, even at the same school, are so common that it defies comprehension, let alone trying to predict what some other family is going to receive in financial aid price discounts.</p>
<p>In a general sense, Williams College is one of the more "generous" need-based aid schools in the country. In general, a need-based aid package at Williams should be competitive with the need-based aid anywhere, and better than most. Which is not to say that an individual family might not do better elsewhere.</p>
<p>It is quite likely that someone qualifying for little or no need-based aid and effectively playing the merit price discounting game elsewhere could get a bigger price discount than at Williams. However, there are very few schools that spend as much per student as Williams does. Even a full fare customer at Williams is getting a $30,000 merit discount relative to the actual per student operating budget.</p>