Stats from most recent year of IPEDS are below. This grouping includes students in federal database, which is mostly persons eligible for Pell grants or persons taking federal loans. I excluded religious specialty colleges (Yeshiva, Bible School, …), tribal colleges, and other specialty groups. I also excluded colleges for which low net cost relates to low sticker prices, rather than FA, such as Rust or BYU-Idaho. The colleges below have a lot of overlap with lists of colleges that meet full need without loans, such as the one at (link not allowed, use a Google search) – mostly super high endowment per student, highly selective colleges; but also Berea and Ozarks.
Lowest Average Net Cost for $30 to $48k Income
- MIT: $-2k (Negative)
- Williams: $-1k (Negative)
- Dartmouth: $-0k (Negative)
- Stanford: $-0k (Negative)
- Chicago: $-0k (Negative)
- Duke: $0k
- Wellesley: $1k
- Washington & Lee: $1k
- Caltech: $1k
- Colby: $1k
Lowest Average Net Cost for $48 to $75k Income
- Williams: $-0k (Negative)
- Chicago: $1k
- Stanford: $1k
- Rice: $1k
- WUSTL: $2k
- Harvard: $2k
- Johns Hopkins: $4k
- MIT: $5k
- Pomona: $5k
- Columbia: $5k
Lowest Average Net Cost for $75 to $110k Income
- Berea: $8k (100% FA, average aid = $52k)
- Stanford: $9k
- Williams: $9k
- Washington & Lee: $9k
- Ozarks: $10k
- Spring Hill: $10k
- Gallaudet: $10k (abnormal distribution, likely small sample size issue)
- Wesleyan: $11k
- Milikin: $11k
- Cooper Union: $12k
Largest Average FA
- Amherst: $64k FA, Average Net Cost = $18k
- Williams: $63k FA, Average Net Cost = $17k
- Princeton: $63k FA, Average Net Cost = $20k
- Wesleyan: $61k FA, Average Net Cost = $20k
- Yale: $61k FA, Average Net Cost = $26k
- Dartmouth: $60k FA, Average Net Cost = $17k
- Pomona: $59k FA, Average Net Cost = $17k
- Stanford: $59k FA, Average Net Cost = $18k
- Wellesley: $59k FA, Average Net Cost = $22k
- Middlebury: $58k FA, Average Net Cost = $23k