[anon_cs493]

I'm confused by this anecdote. Princeton has one of the strongest financial aid programs in the world.

Why didn't you take the offer?

Students do not have to pay tuition if their parents make less than $140K a year. Students receive a full-ride (including tuition, room & board, and a stipend for misc costs) if their parents make less than $65K

Sources:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/01/pf/college/stanford-financia...

https://www.princeton.edu/admission-aid/affordable-all

Personal anecdote: I recently graduated with zero debt from Princeton (in fact, with a net positive gain in capital) and I come from a upper middle class family.

[jboggan]

They certainly didn't when I was accepted in the fall of 1999. I had enough money in my college fund to pay for 1.5 years of tuition, room, and board at Princeton so getting paid to go to a good state school seemed like a no-brainer. I would mostly attribute it to a middle class mindset of education being a necessary cost to be minimized, rather than a very large investment in your future with outsized returns.

[phonon]

In 1998, they substituted grants for loans for students from families earning less than $46,500.

In 2001 they replaced all loans with grants :-(

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jepsen/nytimesJan2801.pdf