Harvard more afforadable for low income parents

[arminnie]

I just wanted to pass this along as I know there are a lot of parents on this board. Too often I hear parents say that they can't afford to send their children to a top notch private school even if the student is admitted.

I think this initiative at Harvard is great and hope it gets more publicity. Even though it is not official policy at other schools most of the truly top schools admit first and then try to work out a financial aid package so the student can attend.

I guess I feel so strongly about this because I received financial aid to go to Tulane and Stanford. My parents could not have paid tuition for the local junior college with me living at home much less for a private college so it truly changed my life.

The tuition ALONE at most private schools is approaching $30,000 a year. So many times really great students don't even apply as they think it is out of reach financially.

Good luck!


The following is from an article in the NY Times:

To get more low-income students to enroll, Harvard will stop asking parents who earn less than $40,000 to make any contribution toward the cost of their children's education. Harvard will also reduce the amount it seeks from parents with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000.

"When only 10 percent of the students in elite higher education come from families in the lower half of the income distribution, we are not doing enough," said Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard, who will announce the financial aid changes at a meeting of the American Council on Education in Miami Beach today.

Dr. Summers said that higher education, rather than being an engine of social mobility, may be inhibiting it because of the wide gap in college attendance for students from different income classes.

Harvard officials said they believed theirs would be the first selective college to remove the parental contribution for low-income students, though some colleges do this unofficially to attract students they want.

At Harvard, the idea of eliminating the parental contribution grew out of focus groups with lower-income students last fall. University officials found that many of the students were paying some or all of their parents' share themselves.

 

[Kallison]

Princeton University has the same type of deal -- it's called blind admission, you get accepted and then they figure out how you can pay for it without being in debt for the rest of your life. Danacara can explain it better.

 

[Margie J]

This is terrific and could change many students lives for the better. If a student has the intelligence and ambition the size of their parents wallets shouldn't be a deciding factor in the admission process. It would also ease the financial burden on the Graduates, who often need to pay back thousands of dollars worth of loans over the course of years.

 

[kasar]

My DH was the lucky recipient of need-blind admission to Harvard (well, not lucky but hard-working!). While he does have some small loans, it would have cost him more to go to a state school. Of course they are in a unique position with their huge endowment, but it is a wonderful program that most schools don't do.

We're so lucky that he was given this opportunity and they are first on our charitable giving list.