<p>Most students at Tulane receive some amount of financial aid, so while there are wealthy kids, certainly, the reputation is exaggerated. I bet Miami is the same way.</p>
<p>Grad school is very different. A lot depends on the field you are in. For the hard sciences, like chemistry and physics, most schools wave tuition and pay a fairly healthy stipend in return for the student being a TA. That can sometimes be supplemented by a grant from the research professor themselves, but that is more unusual. For the humanities it is usually more grant driven, although I would think policies vary quite a bit from school to school. But as far as I know there are no equivalents to the merit aid offers given to undergrads. For one thing grad school can be longer, it is much more open ended.</p>