<p>Why the hell is Princeton giving me 16000 per year and Yale isn't giving me a dime?</p>
<p>What is up with that folks? I really like Yale. But seriously, in the words of Rod Tidwell, show me the ****ing money.</p>
<p>Sounds like you should give a call right away to the FA office. My FA offers from Ivies were all within $500 of each other...</p>
<p>Maybe you should start checking out Princeton instead...</p>
<p>Umm, how about no checking out Princeton.</p>
<p>Talk to Financial Aid. Meet with them during Bulldog Days.</p>
<p>that's very weird. definitely contact FA.</p>
<p>It is not at all surprising that Yale gave you less money than Princeton. See below:</p>
<p>I am a Yale sophomore and the editor of a magazine about college admissions (I edit the magazine to pay my Yale bill). For our spring edition, we are running a scathing story about Yale?s financial aid, particularly in comparison to Harvard?s and Princeton?s.
Applicants at large commonly believe that, since Yale, Harvard and Princeton are in the same league, then they follow similar financial aid guidelines. This is absolutely incorrect. Let me give you some initial figures:</p>
<p>Here are the average graduating debt figures (that is, how much debt the average student has upon graduation) for seniors at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton in 2005:</p>
<p>Yale: $14,306
Harvard: $8,769
Princeton: $4,370</p>
<p>I should note that these numbers were given to me directly by the Yale Admissions Office.</p>
<p>Here are the figures that I have available for 2006:</p>
<p>Yale: $13,300 (down approx. $1,000 from 2005)?this number from Yale Admissions
Harvard: $6,850 (down approx. $2,000 from 2005)?from Harvard?s 2005-06 fiscal report.
Princeton: have not released yet to my knowledge</p>
<p>(To compare the financial aid policies of every school in the country, check out the ?Compare Tool? at economicdiversity.org)</p>
<p>The glaring difference between Harvard, Princeton and Yale is that Yale is a member of the 568 Group (568group.org) which is a group of 28 of the country?s elite schools who meet to discuss standard practices for determining aid. The 568 Group has a ?temporary exemption? from antitrust prosecution from the U.S. government, making them immune to prosecution for price fixing as long as they follow certain guidelines.</p>
<p>Notably, Princeton and Harvard are not members of the 568 Group (all six other Ivies are members). Also remarkable is the fact that, in terms of sheer graduating loan burden per student, Harvard and Princeton offer better financial aid than every other 568 Group school. (Stanford is not a member of the 568 Group, but has heretofore lagged slightly in loan burden figures. From what I?m hearing on this blog, though, it seems like Stanford might just be giving the 568 Group a run for its money this year after sweeping changes to its program.)</p>
<p>You should also know that Princeton does not expect students to take out loans to finance their undergraduate education. In an email sent to me by Princeton Vice President Robert Durkee, the school said, ?This policy doesn't mean that no student will borrow: some students choose to borrow for special needs or to offset shortfalls in their summer or expected term-time earnings. But it does mean that the financial aid packages for Princeton students do not include any required loan amount. Students on financial aid can and do graduate debt free.? This accounts for the relatively minimal amount of debt that Princeton students take.</p>
<p>In 2006, Yale financial aid organizers gathered over 2,000 signatures (just under 40% of the undergraduate population) in support of financial aid reform at the school. You can check those signatures out at:
<a href="http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?yreform%5B/url%5D">http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?yreform</a></p>
<p>I know that Yale Undergraduate Recruitment Coordinators from the Yale Admissions Office monitor this site, and they certainly won?t be happy that I?m posting this information (I promise there will be more to come soon). I challenge them to refute any of the information that I have posted here if they believe it not to be accurate. You will be able to tell by their silence that this information is true.</p>
<p>If you have questions about Yale financial aid, and would like to hear about it from a real student, please contact me at <a href="mailto:andrew.williamson@yale.edu">andrew.williamson@yale.edu</a>. (I?d actually rather hear from you on my work email address <a href="mailto:andrew@prepmag.org">andrew@prepmag.org</a>, but I figure people will be looking for some assurance that I am a real student).</p>
<p>Level90Paladin:</p>
<p>Andrew's post is insightful but it does not mean that Yale will not offer you any aid.</p>
<p>More often than not, Yale will match an offer given by Princeton or Harvard. Call of the Financial Aid office and tell them about your Princeton offer. If they don't give you an equally large grant, they'll probably offer you enough for you to not have to worry about money when making your final college decision. Good luck.</p>
<p>I don't know who Lanzabelle is or where she comes from, but clearly she has not done her research about Yale's financial aid policies.</p>
<p>Top Yale admissions and financial aid officials have informed me that Yale absolutely does not match financial aid offers from other schools on the basis of the offer alone. </p>
<p>If you receive a financial aid match, then, according to the school, it will be because of new financial information that you give.</p>
<p>If Yale changes your financial aid after showing them offers from other schools (which Yale students report has happened), I encourage you to contact me.</p>
<p>I should also add that I know a student at Yale who was also admitted at Princeton. That person received $20000 in financial aid money from Princeton and $0 at Yale. The financial aid office did not change his package after he showed them the Princeton offer.</p>
<p>That person chose to come to Yale because he liked the progressive atmosphere, and took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to do so.</p>
<p>But Williamson, I thought Yale professes to meet 100% of demonstrated need, just as Harvard&co do - if this is true, how can there be such discrepancy?</p>
<p>frrrph, that's a really good question that has had me scratching my head for the last two years. </p>
<p>The short answer is that "need" is a really ambiguous word. By "need," do you mean as much money as your family requires so that it can pay for your Yale education without loans? Does it mean as much money as you require so that your parents don't have to drastically alter their work schedules? The same question applies to students.</p>
<p>The fact is that Harvard and Princeton have starkly better financial aid programs than Yale. This is a fact that Yale President Richard Levin himself admitted in a small lunch discussion with students.</p>
<p>About Princeton, he said: "Princeton just hasn't been able to come up with creative ways of spending its money."</p>
<p>About Harvard, he said we are "just behind" Harvard.</p>
<p>I personally would say that we are much more than "just behind" Harvard, but that's my opinion.</p>
<p>The diplomatic answer to your question is this: every school has a different interpretation of what "need" is.</p>
<p>My non-diplomatic answer (a personal opinion confirmed by a highly trusted source on the Yale campus) is that Yale has repeatedly proven that it will not budge on financial aid until it loses students to Harvard and Princeton (or Stanford, for that matter).</p>
<p>Andrew is just plain wrong about Yale's policy on financial aid. Trust me, I know plenty of people who came to Yale specifically because it gave them better aid than Harvard and/or Princeton.</p>
<p>The information I am going with when I say that Yale will consider matching offers by Harvard and Princeton is from Yale (admitted) students. I'm surprised that you're surprised about offer-matching among these universities' FA offices.</p>
<p>I hope you get your piece out soon enough, because I think Yale plans on upping financial aid next year. If we know that Yale's yield rate may be dropping due to admitted students' financial difficulties, I'm sure the administration knows too. I doubt they're going to sit back and let H and P take students solely because Yale skimps (relatively, of course) on financial aid.</p>
<p>But I'm not wrong.</p>
<p>Because I have emails from Jeff Brenzel explicitly stating that Yale does not match financial aid offers from other schools on the basis of the offer alone. Brenzel claims that finaid students need to document some other change in assets before the shcool will reform packages. </p>
<p>Now, of course, I know and you know what is really happening here: Yale is matching aid offers with Harvard and Princeton to compete for students on an individual basis instead of a complete overhaul of financial aid policy. I, too, know students that report getting aid matched by Yale, but the administration claims that these aid offers were changed on the basis of new information.</p>
<p>I am working on establishing a pattern of aid changes that will strong imply that Yale is, in fact, changing aid packages to compete with Harvard and Princeton, and not justifiably on the basis of new financial aid information. If you know people that have had their aid matched, then I really want to hear from you (or them) about it because it could go directly against the stated policy of the university as I understand it.</p>
<p>When I called the Yale financial aid office, they told me that they will not change my financial aid just because other colleges are offering more aid. They said they needed a valid financial reason. So I gave them some and later the woman told me should would like to see the Stanford and Princeton financial aid. Let me tell you, she told me in great detail how they would not change the package just because another college has a better one...</p>
<p>I think this is a clear case of admissions/fin. aid office saying one thing with a straight face while pretty much everyone KNOWS that it is not true. To me, "we will not change packages based solely on offers by other schools" is both A) a lie in the cases of Harvard and Pton offers (maybe Stanford and MIT too) and B) a statement calculated to make sure kids aren't let down if they don't match an offer (especially if it is from Podunk U.). All of us have been to info sessions on college visits, and they always say stuff like "early decision does not increase your chances of admission" and "EVERYONE seems happy here" which pretty much everyone knows to be a steaming load. It's the same type of thing, IMHO.</p>
<p>Yale is meeting our full financial need with mostly loans. Cornell is offering mostly grants. Highly selective non-Ivies are offering mostly grants -- very generous packages</p>
<p>drummerdude, I agree with you completely. At the same time, I want students to know that, if Yale is matching offers with HPSM, then it could be a strategy aimed at staving off a complete overhaul of the financial aid program at Yale. While individual students would benefit from financial aid matches by Yale, the finaid population at large suffers from policies that President Levin himself has admitted lag behind Harvard and Princeton (if not Stanford now, too).</p>
<p>andrew, im curious, where/when did Levin admit to that? I'd love to have that quote</p>
<p>mr_sanguine--</p>
<p>Email me at <a href="mailto:andrew@prepmag.org">andrew@prepmag.org</a>, and let me know who you are. You're more than welcome to the quote--I already published it in my magazine (readership of 75000), but I'd love to publicize it more.</p>
<p>Andrew</p>