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by chrisBob 4375 days ago
In addition to scholarships, which are merit based, many schools also have good financial aid, which is need based. I think colleges advertise this poorly but it makes a huge difference.

I am at Boston University now and while the sticker price is $55k/year the average american student pays about half of that. When my wife went to Princeton they used the FASA form to to calculate how much your family could afford and gave you a grant (gift) to cover the portion that should be student loans. In this way the fancy Ivy League schools can be cheaper than most other schools, and this is available to every student that is accepted.
2 comments
smeyer 4374 days ago
When you say that "the average american student pays about half of that", are you counting student loans towards the half the student pays or the half they don't? I've seen loans treated both of these ways before. I went to Harvard, and like your wife at Princeton, I found the financial aid incredibly generous. Their net price calculator online is a pretty good guide to their policies: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat... .
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chrisBob 4374 days ago
collegedata.com (what ever that is) says that the total cost to attend BU is $61k, and the average need based gift was $26k plus another $7k in "self help" for freshmen which I assume is a combination of loans and work for the school. 83% of freshmen got aid, but less than half of students over all got financial aid. Some of this is skewed by the fact that BU has a large number of foreign students who typically do not get any financial aid.

$30k per year is still a lot, but its a private university in the middle of Boston. Half of that $30k is for room and board.

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl...

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swalkergibson 4374 days ago
> I think colleges advertise this poorly but it makes a huge difference.

Many colleges do not have the endowments of the Ivy League, therefore, need-based financial aid awards are essentially non-existent for people who are simultaneously too rich for aid and too poor to pay outright.

For instance, in my application to Babson College in 2007, I was outright denied all financial aid because my parents (combined) made $90,000 and had a modest retirement portfolio in the $200k range. At the time, tuition was about $50k/year. Without them utterly sacrificing their entire nest-egg or moving out of their own house, paying for school on their own was entirely out of the question. Thus, I ended up going to the private loan market and got a decent rate for a $50k student loan. Thank God I was only there for a year, I cannot imagine having to service a debt of ~$1,500/month for the next 20 years.

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