<p>@gibby @ariesathena - parent of twins… I’ve run the net price calculators for about two dozen schools with one in college next year and two in college next year. The second student appears to have a reduced EFC of 30-40%, by my calculation. One may elect to do a gap year, so am trying to figure out the finances of it all. In comparing the EFC for Yale (the only Ivy they are interested in) to LAC’s, Yale has a considerably lower EFC than all we have explored, except Williams. Yale and Williams were very close. The EFC for other LACs (Bowdoin, Swarthmore, Amherst) were 2x to 3x higher than Yale or Williams.</p>
<p>Any of the ivies can match or exceed Harvard’s financial aid application. It is really a case by case basis. HYP are generally free to any family making under 80 thousand per year, and Columbia is free to any family makng under 60 thousand. Those four would have the best financial aid in general.</p>
<p>It really depends on the income level. Pomona for instance is cheaper than HYP (though barely less than H) for low income students, but it’s much more expensive for higher income folk</p>
<p>Gibbby, don’t you mean that the issue is that Harvard does not view UChicago as a peer school? A peer school is one which is viewed as one that can threaten to attract a student if the aid is not strong enough. UChicago is not a peer school to Harvard. Cross admits are unlikely to choose UChicago over Harvard so Harvard has no incentive to match the aid package.</p>
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Correct. Which is why I consider Harvard’s peer schools for financial aid purposes to be: Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. That’s why I did not include other schools as peers, such as Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, and Pomona as I imagine virtually all cross-admits would choose Harvard if admitted to Harvard and one of those schools. </p>
<p>You all get that Harvard’s aid is only need-based, whereas many schools give merit based aid though not to everyone, that totals more for individual students?</p>
<p>Also - shouldn’t we be comparing COA after all grant (non-repayable) aid? Not how much money “given”?</p>
<p>^^ Yes, students and their parents should be examining the COA for every college. When my son and daughter went through the college applications process, we made a spreadsheet that broke everything down, as many colleges offer a mix of scholarships (gift-money that doesn’t have to be paid back), loans (money that must be paid back after you graduate), and merit aid (often for a student’s freshman year, but not offered in subsequent years). If money is a concern (and it was for our family) you really need to crunch the COA numbers and understand what a college is offering, and if they will continue to offer the same money in your sophomore, junior and senior years. Colleges like Harvard that provide need-based financial aid will NOT match another college’s merit aid.</p>
<p>I thought cost varied quite a bit depending on how many siblings are in college at the same time. That has been our experience.</p>
<p>It is difficult to imagine financial aid more generous than Harvard’s, though I think some of the named schools above are certainly equal.</p>
<p>If there is a factor in a family’s financial picture that would affect the aid offer, that family can contact the FA office and supply documentation. That is the only way I know of to affect the aid offer, and the folks in the FA office are often responsive and fair.</p>
<p>Nine schools give more FA than Harvard and are need-blind, in reverse descending order: Yale, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, U of Chicago, Skidmore, Stanford, Trinity, Bates. Average aid package hovers around $53k. Other need-blind very generous schools are all the Ivies, Duke, MIT, the elite women’s colleges, plus top LACs like Vassar, Pomona and Bowdoin. All of the schools listed are very generous with international students as well. </p>
<p>Can I elaborate on an important point which was made by a previous poster? I think it’s quite wrong to say that one school is more generous than another if they are giving more aid. Instead, you should look at the cost of attendance after subtracting the aid award - in other words, compare the net costs to the family. Otherwise, you penalize schools that have tried to keep their tuition increases from being too large. Using the numbers posted by gibby in post #22 I find that the awards given by Stanford, Princeton, Yale and Harvard all result in roughly the same net cost of attendance, give or take about 1K. </p>
<p>To do an even better comparison I would count aid in the form of loans as being worth about 10 cents on the dollar and aid in the form of work-study as being worth about 50 cents on the dollar (you may value loans & work-study more or less than I do). I think of loans as being closer to a form of low interest financing rather than aid (I think SPYH don’t incorporate loans in their aid packages but some of the other schools mentioned above do, such as Wesleyan). Of course, being awarded financing for your education is definitely a benefit; I just think a dollar of loans shouldn’t be considered nearly the same as a dollar of grants.</p>
<p>Of course, I’m assuming a student thinks the “value” they derive from attending all four schools is roughly the same, but this can be adjusted based on your personal preferences.</p>
<p>@stw2sg - I’m curious where you got the data behind this assertion - it’s definitely at odds with the financial aid data in the Common Data Set (based on the percentage of full-time undergraduates receiving grant-based aid, and the average grant received).</p>
<p>Most people care about what they are responsible for in the end, i.e., out of pocket cost. As sbjdorlo states, in some cases, how outside scholarships are in treated in granting aid can make all the difference even if the school comes in at a higher cost.</p>
<p>The schools that will give u much more aid than harvard are the ones that actually admit u.</p>
<p>I would challenge that these schools will match each others aid packages. My experience is that they do not. That is simply not how these schools compete with each other. </p>
<p>The Ivy Group schools (which are basically the Ivy League schools plus MIT), used to use common rating systems for financial aid (for example, they all treated the value of the primary residence in the same way), but then the US Justice department took action against them on the grounds that they were running an anti-competitive cartel. Now they don’t use common systems.</p>
<p>FWIW, last year, Princeton’s numbers were the most impressive, with 74% of undergraduates graduating with no debt and the median debt of those who had debt was ~$5500. That is a much better figure than Harvard’s last year, which if I recall correctly was something like 66%. But there is a fair amount of fluctuation.</p>
<p>@stw2sg: Wesleyan is no longer totally need-blind and there is controversy over the issue: <a href=“https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/01/wesleyan-shifts-away-need-blind-policy-citing-financial-and-ethical-concerns”>https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/01/wesleyan-shifts-away-need-blind-policy-citing-financial-and-ethical-concerns</a></p>
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<p><a href=“http://needblindfocus.group.wesleyan.edu”>http://needblindfocus.group.wesleyan.edu</a></p>
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<p>Do these these schools give as much need-based aid to graduate students as they do to undergrads?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.idealist.org/info/GradEducation/Resources/Financing/Understanding”>http://www.idealist.org/info/GradEducation/Resources/Financing/Understanding</a></p>
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<p>Also see: <a href=“https://studentaid.ed.gov/sites/default/files/graduate-professional-funding-info.pdf”>https://studentaid.ed.gov/sites/default/files/graduate-professional-funding-info.pdf</a></p>
<p>Agree with gibby, especially in the math and sciences. Journalism, Arts, not so much. </p>
<p>Bldrdad, I got the list from this source: <a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2014/09/23/10-colleges-that-award-international-students-the-most-financial-aid”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2014/09/23/10-colleges-that-award-international-students-the-most-financial-aid</a></p>
<p>@stw2sg - the problem with that list - it’s the average aid package for international students who receive aid. Many schools offer little aid to internationals - taken the an extreme, a school that offered a full ride to a single international student out of a thousand, and no aid to the other 999, would be at the top of the list.</p>
<p>There is a huge range in the number of internationals receiving aid in that list - 7 times as many international students at Harvard are receiving aid than UChicago, despite student bodies of similar size.</p>