The only hidden cost was a $75 Student Activity Fee paid the first semester of every year, which was not included in the financial aid letter. Yale really does a good job of identifying expenses and contributions, but for first time parents it’s a bit of a challenge to understand the financial aid letter.
Most financial aid packages, including those from Yale, have a self-help portion, which includes student income from a summer job and term-time employment during the school year.
When looking at your financial aid letter, it’s best to just subtract the free money, often called a scholarship (as in GIFT AID Yale Scholarship) from the cost of tuition, room and board. The balance (divided by 2) is what you owe the university each semester. For example, here was my son’s award letter from last year.
So . . .
$59,800 (tuition, room & board ($45,800 + $14,000)
- $41,167 (GIFT AID Yale Scholarship )
= $18,633, divided by 2 = $9,316.50* per semester. That’s what we paid to Yale per semester last year (plus the $75 Student Activity Fee mentioned earlier for the fall semester).
- That amount DID NOT include the cost of Yale's optional Student Health Insurance, which we waived as our son was covered under our family's private health insurance. If we had not waived the Student Health Insurance, it would have been an additional $2,100 per year. See: http://yalehealth.yale.edu/student-rates
FWIW: My son used the money he made during the summer (about $3,000) and the money he earned during the school year (about $4,000 working in Yale’s technology office) to pay for books, toiletries, beer, pizza, club baseball dues, entertainment (Toad’s, ZipCar trips, dates) and a spring break trip to New Orleans. If he had not used his money to pay for those items, we would have had to make up the difference. However, Yale’s financial aid letter did budget $3,800 for those expenses – they however, did not estimate or consider a spring break trip in their estimates. Many Yale parents pay for their student’s expenses on campus, but our family wanted our son to have “skin in the game” so he paid for those items.