Harvard announced today that it would ease the burden that Middle-class families would have to bear to send their kids to the second-best university on the planet. I have always stated that Ivy League schools are actually more affordable than many other universities. They just have a ton of money to help those who genuinely need it.
By the time I got to college, my family was relatively poor. I came from a single family parent where my mom was making under 30K a year. When choosing colleges, I did not let cost factor into the equation because I believed that a good education from the right school was worth it at almost any price. What I discovered was that these schools had fantastic need-based financial aid.
I left Princeton (the best university in the world) with about $17,000 in debt (all of which is already paid off). If I had actually been about two years younger, I would have left with $0 in debt as Princeton has switched all it’s need based financial aids to grants rather than loans. The last two years I attended the university, my family paid $0 to the university. I only paid my fees to my eating club.
I actually talked to several people in my high school who did not apply to some of the better schools because they were not sure how they would afford a private school tuition. I wish they had known how affordable it really can be. So for all those of you who find this page and are wondering if you should apply my advice to you is this. APPLY! Worry about how you will get the money later. The worse thing that could happen is that somehow you might not be able to afford and you won’t go, but you will never know unless you try.
I saw that news, too. The magazine called The Week basically made the case that by doing what it has done, it still enables the rich to get richer.
But that’s not what I want to comment on. I think, in general, private schools end up being WAY cheaper than state-run schools. Woodbury has nowhere near the endowment Princeton has, but I still got excellent financial aid and only had something like $3000 worth of loans to pay off for my entire 4 years because I got a lot of grants.
Is this article you read online? I would love to read it.
I agree with your comment about state schools. It was cheaper for me to go to Princeton than UCLA. If I went now, it wouldn’t even be close. I could go to Princeton pretty much for free. UCLA would actually be pretty expensive, even in state.
Well, it was from the magazine called The Week (http://www.theweekdaily.com/). Some of their articles are online and available to read, others (like the Harvard article [http://www.theweekdaily.com/search/?words=harvard&x=0&y=0]) seem to be locked only to subscribers.
Incidentally, I only just found out about this magazine two days ago when I was at my aunt’s house because she has a subscription and it was lying around. It’s interesting in that it combs other news sources and compiles together snippets (essentially) so as to give you an idea of what is being said in various sources about the topics.