I wonder how common this story is, my brother was accepted to Penn but our family didn’t have the money. We both ended up at large state schools getting honors degrees. The whole decision making process for us was money based not merit based.
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.)