Wake Forest University announced that undergraduates from North Carolina with annual family incomes less than $200,000 per year will attend tuition-free, beginning for students admitted for the 2026 fall semester.
For North Carolina students with an annual family income less than $100,000, financial aid will cover the cost of standard living expenses in addition to the full cost of tuition. Students from North Carolina with an annual family income between $200,000 and $300,000 will be eligible for financial aid covering 50% of tuition.
Called the North Carolina Gateway to Wake Forest University, the initiative aims to create more opportunities for talented, high-achieving North Carolina students to attend Wake Forest regardless of family income.
"The North Carolina Gateway to Wake Forest University demonstrates our deep commitment to students from our home state. It says clearly to students and families who may not have considered Wake Forest because of cost: âWake Forest is within your reach.ââ says Wake Forest University President Susan R. Wente.
This is fantastic! I love seeing more and more universities offering full rides or free tuition to middle- and upper-middle class families. If youâre a family making $250K you probably assume little to no aid at most places. Even with half-tuition it will still be pricey and a stretch for these families but hopefully will open the door wider to so many.
My family is at the 250k level, what schools would we receive the most aid at?
I have no idea. Run the NPC for any school you are interested in. Princeton is generally known as very generous. Itâs not just income, also assets. Some schools ignore home equity. Some count it. Some count part of it over a certain threshold. All you can do is figure out schools you are interested in and run the NPC. Good luck.
Yes! I am for sure applying to Princeton
School by school - and assets matter too.
If youâre looking to spend less, who gives what doesnât necessarily matter.
if a $95k school gave you $30k, and another school is $45k full pay with no aid, which is cheapest ?
Figure out a budget and what type of school you like and go from there. There are schools $20-95k so set a budget and work from there.
Where does this money come from? The cost of these students attending the school needs to be âmade upâ in some way or another.
Is it higher tuition for the other students, larger donations from alumni, additional state/federal funding, higher investment returns from the endowment,âŠ
Wake is need aware. Their words wonât necessarily match their actions.
As it is they are a school for the wealthy - full pay dominates there. More than 75%!!
Itâs a marketing gimmick IMHO.
More will apply and get rejected if the family bank account is light.
It could be any of those and more. University operating revenues and operating budgets have a lot of different components.
At my S25âs school (Clemson, which is a public school in South Carolina) they keep shouting to the rooftops about how theyâve held in-state tuition flat yet again. Thatâs great for in-state residents, but the costs are going up a good bit for out of state. Plus itâs not like ALL costs are held flat. Our bill for the semester included such things as a $4 âcareer center feeâ and a $5 âmatriculation feeâ (plus other more notable and I think more common fees). I get that $9/semester is pretty negligible, but I feel like they are doing that because, in part, they canât raise the tuition for in state. Oh, you need a new person working at the career center? If you charge $4/semester, so $8/year times 25,000 students POW thatâs $200k and thereâs a new employee with benefits or several part time employees without.
I hear you.
Having said that, the fact that tuition keeps going up and up and up and up year after year after year would seem to indicate that a substantial part of the cost is being allocated to tuition paying students. Not sure for example they can predict endowment returns or alumni donations - both are much more uncertain/volatile. They can fill all the seats with paying students -with 99.99% certainty.
Someone, ALWAYS, pays for it. Lots of interests/politics/games going on but I am afraid that at the end of the day most of the cost being generated by these initiatives is being shouldered by full-paying or out-of-state students.
That is the way it is. Take it or leave it - lots of schools to choose from if you donât like a school for one reason or another. But it will reach its limit at some point - sooner rather than later in my opinion. As some point even families with $1M household income are not going to be willing to pay $150K in tuition every year.
So operating costs per student can also go up naturally, meaning as professors can demand higher salaries, vendors can demand higher prices, and so on. There is also competition between colleges that can basically require expansion of operations, and that can also cause per student operating costs to go up.
So one possible measure to look at would be something like net tuition as a percentage of operating cost. Net tuition is what they actually get net of student aid.
If net tuition is going up as a percentage of operating costs, this means the institution is shifting more of their operating costs onto the students. It is a good bet this particularly means full or near full pay students.
If it is going down as a percentage of operating costs, usually this means the institution has found ways to increase funding for student aid. This doesnât necessarily help full or near full pay students, but they may not be hurt either.
If net tuition is staying around the same as a percentage of operating costs, but aid is getting notable more generous, this is back to meaning costs are being shifted toward the full and near full pay students.
Again there are lots of fine details and moving parts, but I think it is generally pretty useful to look at net tuition in this way to get a high level read on what the institution is doing.