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Comment by ambler0 | Hacker News Reader

I took him to mean that everyone at Harvard who doesn't come from wealth gets a huge amount of financial aid.

That would be cool. I know Harvard has a huge endowment. That would be a great way to use it. Any data on whether that's true?

You can look at Harvard's stated financial aid standards. The rough guideline last time I checked (I'm Harvard class of 2013) was that if your family income was under 60k a year, you got full aid, and from 60k to 180k per year you were expected to pay about 10% of your family income. They have a calculator you can use here: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat... .

It's definitely the case that when they say that Harvard students are graduating without debt, it is because of the generous financial aid and not just the independent wealth of the students and their families.

https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works/cost...

> approximately 70 percent of Harvard students receive some form of financial aid.

About 2/3rds of Harvard students graduate with no debt. http://madamenoire.com/111119/the-10-schools-that-generate-t...

Definitely not true when I graduated (almost 20 years ago). I came out with ~$25k student loan debt. That said, Harvard's endowment did enable them to be much more generous than other schools on grant money - no other school came close in their financial aid offer to me.

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