[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.