How do colleges co ordinate aid for siblings?

Paying for College
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Thank you for your comments. I think this thread points out 2 things: 1) when giving help on CC we must allow for variations in the experience of the requester and 2) that fin aid gets weird as your income climbs. H and most other schools in fact asked us to pay 50% or less of the EFC number. Yale has to date refused to match other Ivies. Yale has not been more generous than Penn. If we had a million dollar income our EFC for two children would accommodate full tuition for both. We don’t have that income and our EFC is less than what it would cost for two. However your responses have been helpful as the Yale number is about 60% of EFC so I can now see how that happened. And I think it is a fair guess that our son would get the same aid. Perhaps the range of aid ( that is in some cases as much as $20k apart) shows which schools want her more. Thank you all.

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And yes, momof2kids. Child 1 is at YaLe. Child 2 has been accepted at Yale. Child 2’s offer from Yale was far worse than her offers from other comparable schools.

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I don’t think the range in aid is because schools “want her more”. The schools you listed meet full need for all, and this is based in their formula for need based aid. Some just happen to be more generous, especially with higher wage earners, than others.

And all have that “with typical assets” for their very generous need based aid. For example, Stanford now offers free tuition for kids with family incomes of $125,000 or less…with typical assets. And that can be the rub because my guess is that each school determines what “typical assets” is.

If you are going to have two kids at Yale, definitely contact Yale about your older child’s package for next year. If all the info had been submitted, my guess is they should be able to help you.

And remember too…the family contribution for the two might not be exactly the same…a couple of reasons.

  1. Student assets and income are not likely identical.
  2. Many schools increase the student contribution amount each year a student is enrolled. So Yale could ask a higher amount in the student contribution for your older child.
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Thank you.

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Child 2’s offer from Yale was far worse than her offers from other comparable schools.


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Well, Child 1’s offer will likely end up being the same or close to it.

You can show Yale the Stanford offer and see what they’ll do.