<p>Etyso, the sad part is that if your friend’s parents owned a very expensive house and channeled their income into material goods, your friend would probably have gotten some aid. I’m guessing that Caltech saw that there was money in savings just waiting to be spent, and it pounced.</p>
<p>Lalaloo, maybe you should take it as a sign that you need to be applying for outside scholarships. Your chances of getting a significantly better aid package somewhere else are poor. My mom was not too thrilled about my EA aid package (even though it was <10% of her income) and threatened to send me to state school (!) if it didn’t improve by May. So I applied for scholarships from my school district, Rotary, etc. which ended up covering a lot of the EFA. At any rate I wouldn’t pray that MIT’s package is any better than Caltech’s ;)</p>
<p>So maybe someone can answer this question about Harvard’s new policy: you only have to “contribute” 10% of your parents’ income per year, but what is the policy on loans? Are they just loading you down with loans to make up for all the money you’re “saving”?</p>