[smeyer]

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... .

[chrisBob]

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...