<p>@tk21769 - There wasn’t really so much of a premise as there was an observation of what the OP saw on CC. I don’t think he/she was really trying to say it was all that way at these schools, although the way it was stated in the post could be interpreted that way. That is one reason I asked for clarification. Of course there are lots of different cases for lots of different students at all these schools. There are many students that in fact turned down an Ivy or equivalent because of full scholarships at other schools. There are many that got the scholarship offers and didn’t turn it down. There are many that didn’t even get major scholarship offers from other schools, even though they had Ivy level stats.</p>
<p>The main point is that the OP didn’t have data, they were speculating that all the students at an Ivy League or equivalent school could have gotten a similar scholarship offer to attend a school that offers such scholarships. Now this is probably not true, I am not sure there are really enough of those kinds of scholarships out there to cover all the kids that attend all the Ivies, Stanford, etc. But let’s say it was true. The OP was then asking that since the advice on CC seemed to be overwhelmingly to take the full scholarship, why didn’t all the Ivy kids do that? And subsequently it has been pointed out that the ones that ask on CC don’t represent all financial and other circumstances, but in fact most likely represents those caught in that middle squeeze. Yes, they like the idea of attending that super name brand university, but they don’t qualify for the no loan programs but can’t really afford the school either, at least not without taking on debt. And remember, those stats you gave are an average, which could mean there are students at those schools with fairly substantial debt. No way to know.</p>
<p>Thus your citations of debt levels doesn’t really prove anything, since there are several scenarios that could explain them. But it certainly supports the premise that at the most prestigious schools low income students get a lot of debt-free aid, and/or that there are a lot of wealthy students at those schools, and/or that a lot of the middle income students that got in decided not to attend but instead took the generous offers from the other schools. The truth ls, no doubt, some mix of all that which keeps the average debt low. The other schools have students that end up with more debt because even if they snag some of these would-have-been Ivy students, it is a small percentage of their overall student body.</p>