net price calculator?

tk21769
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 10:51:00 +0000

Is it true that $75K is the line in the sand between getting significant financial assistance and not getting hardly anything?

Short answer: No.

Here’s a list of ~60 colleges that claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2015/09/14/colleges-that-report-meeting-full-financial-need

Trinity College (Hartford, CT) is one of the ~60.
Here is a break-down of mean need-based aid, by family income, for Trinity families that received need-based aid:
http://www.trincoll.edu/AboutTrinity/offices/InstitutionalResearchPlanning/Documents/financialAid.pdf
Mean n-b aid is over $25K even for families making $150K and up.
Of course, other factors beside income also matter.

It would appear that typically, families making $75K or less can count on ~$50K+ to $60K+ in need-based aid from a so-called full-need school. It may make sense to think of $75K (or a little more) as a lower boundary for the upper middle income “donut hole” (the income range that may not be low enough for adequate n-b aid, yet isn’t rich enough to make cost a non-issue, when comparing private schools to in-state public alternatives.) However, if it’s any kind of “line in the sand”, it’s not very clear or fixed.