State School vs Harvard: Any Middle Ground?

haavain
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:35:15 +0000

well Princeton was my bros first choice and he wasnt able to go there because it was too expensive apparently even with their contribution. Harvard on the other turned out the be much cheaper (like i said 17k/year).



What years? The HYP middle-class initiatives have only come about in the last few years. If your brother got a significantly different package from P than H under the current (more-or-less) finaid programs, that points to some kind of unusual circumstance in your family that significantly affects aid.



And back to John Hopkins, if i were to send the FAFSA form to them (same that got Harvard cost down from 50 grand to 17), would John Hopkins as well give us financial aid to a point that is was less than 25 or 20k a year?



I doubt it. Harvard requires families to contribute only 10% of their income for incomes up to $180k. The fact that your family pays $17k at Harvard indicates you have an income of about $170k, which is above a level that would qualify you for aid at most full-need schools. You have stated that your family is “lower middle class,” however, which seems to contradict that.

With a genuinely middle class or lower middle class income (<80k, say), yes, you could expect your EFC to be less than 25k. But there are a whole lot of confounding factors–assets that the family cannot sell or borrow against, self-employment, divorced parents, and so on–that might affect this. Your EFC might be driven up because of one of these.

–actually, Hopkins has its own aid estimator online ([Hopkins Undergraduate Admissions :: Financial Aid :: Financial Aid Links](http://apply.jhu.edu/finaid/links.html)). Grab a parent and/or the parents’ tax forms and fill it out. It’ll probably be more enlightening than a bunch of anonymous strangers.