I was accepted to Cornell as an undergrad, but my family couldn't afford it, so I had to go to a state university instead, with in-state tuition. My scores didn't even matter without the money.
Please don't avoid applying to a school just because you assume you won't be offered enough aid.
Also, if an aid package doesn't work for you, please call the aid office to explain your situation. Tell them you want to attend, but money is the only barrier. They will work with you.
It is incredible any family says no to a top tier college program for any reason. It’s like winning the lottery. Taking out federal loans to pay to go to Cornell is still a fantastic deal, as long as you study the right things, even considering the loans are mispriced due to all the people who do not pay them back.
It’s just basic arithmetic, so I cannot believe that the obstacle for families is knowledge of how the system works. Something else is always at play when people make completely drop dead stupid financial decisions, things that are usually personal and ancestral, deep problems that cannot be solved by arithmetic. On the financial flip side it’s also why people go into dentistry - the arithmetic is terrible considering how much dental school costs, but something about the relationship between the family and the kids is coercing kids into dental school anyway. This is not an unorthodox opinion.
Just because you can get a loan to cover the cost doesn't mean it's affordable.
I've noticed a definite difference between lower and middle income people in this regard.
People without much income, "working class" if you will, view loans as "something to help make ends meet"
More middle and upper-middle class people view loans as "access to cheap credit." I.e. ways to leverage a little excess money into a lot of excess money.
The main difference is the level of confidence that the leverage isn't going to turn on you and flip your life upside-down because you can't make the payments.
* There's a caveat that for those in the lowest incomes, attending mattered. I wonder if this is due to a networking effect rather than the quality of the school
MIT:
> Six out of every 10 students receive MIT need-based aid. the average price paid by an undergraduate receiving financial aid in 2019–2020 was $21,917—that’s approximately what it costs to attend a state school. And for students with family incomes under $90,000 a year, we ensure that scholarship funding will allow them to attend MIT tuition-free.
Harvard puts the following numbers front and center:
20 % of Harvard families pay nothing
55 % receive Harvard scholarship aid
12 K average parent contribution
100 % of students can graduate debt-free
Can graduate debt-free, or do actually graduate debt-free?
This also seems to ignore parental debt. Many parents cannot afford to pay $12K a year (or more) and have to take out home equity or other loans in order to pay the parental contribution that the university financial aid office decides upon.
Does this include graduate and professional students?
And what about "big-name" schools that don't have Harvard's $41B endowment? Some monetarily "poorer" ivies (Dartmouth and Brown) have endowments that are tiny by comparison (though $6B or $5B isn't exactly chump change. Also they had terrific returns of 8% and 12% for 2020.)
What does this say about people like me? Am I on a lower track for life now? *Feels like people like me are underrepresented in conversations like this!
Edit: Not to be misleading - I hadn't been accepted as I never applied. The below replies are based on talks with recruiters prior to applying, which I ultimately never did.
But no, I try to have no regrets. I know enough people saddled in student loan debt who didn't get their big shot. As an introvert, I could see that being me as I probably wouldn't have networked adequately. Then there's the whole fact that I would not have my wife and daughter likely. Very Butterfly Effect like thinking.
I find school's love to offer loans.