[entee]

I personally know several people who were not in that 1-5% who did go to MIT and most definitely have massive student loans. Maybe they do that now, but they definitely didn't in the past.

[fny]

More acendata: In 2009, I forewent MIT because it would have cost me ~$40K a year whereas every other Ivy I got into asked for $15K to $20K a year.

[nshelly]

Agreed, there could be people outside of the top 5% who have loan payments, and those from families earning more than $200,000 who decided not to pay the full amount.

With this pledge, maybe MIT can bump up the free tuition level for those from families earning under $80,000 to $125,000 like at Stanford. The number is somewhat arbitrary and depends on the sliding window of tuition rate. After all for well-endowed, prestigious schools, tuition is unhinged from services received / amount of spending per student.

[koliber]

That would mean that the people you know are in the remaining 18% of people. It does not contradict the parent post.