<p>Do you know anyone who was accepted into HYP or any other school that claims to cover demonstrated need without loans, yet didn’t attend because they really couldn’t afford it? (This is different from not attending because they got some great scholarship elsewhere.)</p>
<p>I dont, but i dont think thats possible because they will pump as much money as the family proves they need. Either way lets say the family of the accepted student was not well-off and he was awarded 70% covered, i would definetely take the loan for the 30% left, HYP education would be definetely worth it.</p>
<p>I think the ‘hole’ in financial aid in the Ivy League is for families in the 150-250K income range. Financial aid will be minimal, (as it should be) but 40K per year can be a tough nut to cover, especially for families that haven’t saved much and have spent their money on the trappings of the upper middle class lifestyle.</p>
<p>I don’t know of anyone personally, but I’ve heard of people who are in a single parent household where the parent makes crap, but the financial aid CSS profile requires the non-custodial parent to fill out information, where he/she could be earning $1/2 million, but refuse to pay and help for college. And the student can’t go.
But I think there are ways around that…I’m not totally sure…</p>
<p>“I think the ‘hole’ in financial aid in the Ivy League is for families in the 150-250K income range.”</p>
<p>The problem is that “the hole” seems to change every year. For example, in 2008 and 2009, Yale was providing substantial financial aid to families making up to $180k. This year, with little fanfare, Yale lowered that cap to $130k – although you cannot tell from their December 16th announcement without comparing the two press releases:</p>
<p>Yale Financial Aid 2008-2009: [Yale</a> Cuts Costs for Families and Students](<a href=“http://www.opac.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=2320]Yale”>http://www.opac.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=2320)
Yale Financial Aid 2010-2011: [Financial</a> aid budget to increase by 8 percent | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/dec/16/financial-aid-budget-increase-8-percent/]Financial”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/dec/16/financial-aid-budget-increase-8-percent/)</p>
<p>Yup. Raised it just in time 
guess I won’t be able to go since no way will my parents try to hide some money haha :(</p>
<p>The people that assess your financial situation at very good at doing their jobs. However, the problem is usually debt, since they do not take that into account. Also, I do not see how a ~10-20K per year+ interest (disparity between what is offered and what you can actually afford) will prove to be a problem considering that you’ll be making 60-120K a year straight out of Harvard. You need to work diligently with the FA office and things will almost definitely work out. Needing 50K in FA per year and getting none (from HYPSM) is virtually unheard of.</p>
<p>I think CSS takes mortgage debt into consideration, though. So unless you have credit card debt in the 10ks+, I wouldn’t worry.</p>
<p>My friend graduated last year, he got into Princeton but didn’t go because he didn’t get enough aid :(</p>
<p>The Harvard admissions officer who did the info session that my D1 attended (5 years ago) told the crowd “no one has ever had to turn down Harvard because they couldn’t afford it.” Now granted, I’m sure that some have turned it down since they didn’t WANT to afford it, but the fact that that statement is part of their repertoire suggests to me that if you told a financial aid officer “I want to come, but I won’t be able to afford it,” they’d probably be willing to do a serious review of your aid package.</p>
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<p>Guaranteed? Good! Glad I picked Harvard; I didn’t even know about this!</p>
<p>^lol10char</p>
<p>the two students who got into Columbia and Cornell in 2009 both chose to go somewhere else because of money. The family that I know the best, the parents are both teachers so make 130,000+ and house is completely paid off. The student went to Case with a lot of merit money.
The other student chose a full ride (national merit scholar) somewhere else.</p>
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<p>I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but you don’t seem to have read the entire sentence. Reread and see if you still would have left the same comment, smartass. But if you did read the entire sentence, I think you’d be stupid to disagree (based on released average starting salaries of grads from Harvard’s peers).</p>
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<p>I did read your sentence, which is a shame because it was stupid. It suggested that a prospective Harvard student could make a financial decision with input from the consideration that he/she would be making 60k-120k year straight out of Harvard. Even if we ignore the fact that this consideration is blatantly false (many graduate from Harvard and make $0), the point that you were trying to make is still misleading because the median salary for Ivy league grads is $60k, according to payscale. This means that your range only describes half of Harvard graduates, and it’s further misleading because it’s very unlikely that salaries between 60k and 120k are distributed across equal intervals. You just went ahead and took the median value and an upper extrema, and made that the salary range for Harvard graduates. Wrong.</p>
<p>I like Ike. :)</p>
<p>Ah. The figures I looked at were both outdated and for a specific industry. My apologies to Dwight. </p>
<p>Regardless, OP, I do not see a problem with taking on some debt to attend a school like Harvard.</p>