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RJM - What is the source of this information, because my bank account says otherwise.

Son had offers from 2 Ivys, and we got some FA from both offers.  One Ivy school matched the others total FA package, and actually lowered it with a $4K yearly institutional grant 14 years ago.  List price for both schools went up $40K in those 14 years.  Fast forward to today, and these numbers just don't look right based on my experience and reviewing College Navigator for old times sake. https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/

Also, the admissions rates are an aggregate number.  Different colleges within the University have higher and lower acceptance rates depending on the specific intended major.  For example, Cornell has both a public and private charter as a land grant university.  Part of Cornell is funded by SUNY for agriculture and life sciences, veterinary medicine, and industry and labor relations.  https://www.suny.edu/campuses/cornell/    Architecture seems to be the most competitive major at all the D1 schools we looked at both in terms of acceptance and staying in that major.   I've never come across a D1 baseball playing architecture major, and there is probably a really good reason for that!

Last edited by fenwaysouth

I can’t remember where I pulled the graphic. The article was way too long to include. It’s been a while since your son was at Cornell. In some cases how Ivies handle cost has changed. But the point of the post still applies to any expensive college. Don’t get scared off by the sticker price. Most students aren’t paying sticker.

Last edited by RJM
@RJM posted:

.............

But the point of the post still applies to any expensive college. Don’t get scared off by the sticker price. Most students aren’t paying sticker.

Absolutely.  But I understand it is hard for some to get by some of those published numbers on College Navigator (based on gov't data).   The truly interested candidates need to look past those retail numbers and talk to the FA dept for their specific case and compare to other offering D1s or others.  Then I think you have solved for the financial part of the equation.  Academics and athletics also part of the overall equation that need to be examined.

JMO.

@Good Knight and others,

So this is just getting interesting.  I was not aware of this class action lawsuit until yesterday.   Possibly the numbers posted by @RJM are a result (?) of the class action law suit noted below.  I don't know, just reading between the lines here.  Some of these schools settled for pile of money, and some are going to fight it.  Details are in this article.

https://cornellsun.com/2024/02...d-antitrust-lawsuit/

"The schools, dubbed the “568 Cartel,” include Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, Vanderbilt University and Yale University."

"The accused universities were exempt from antitrust law as long as they admitted students “without regard to the financial circumstances of the student involved or the student’s family,” referred to as a need-blind admissions policy."

"The amended complaint argues that the defendants violated that exemption because they were not acting in a need-blind manner before its expiration."

We did not pay full sticker price at an Ivy for my (nonbaseball) son. Got some financial aid every year, and the year we had 2 in college we got 50%. Financial aid at these schools is completely individual, and varies from year to year.

it will be interesting to see whether this lawsuit can prove that the schools were not need-blind. I'm going to think they probably were need-blind in the sense of not looking at financial aid statements when making decisions, but I'm sure they have many other ways of figuring out which applicants come from wealthy families. Meaning, you don't know for sure that someone from a private high school has money, but it's statistically likely.

Most Ivies state that around 50% of their freshmen receive some financial aid.  I have no reason to doubt that number.  Dartmouth, for example, says 49%; at Princeton, it's 62%.

There is absolutely no reason to steer clear of an Ivy without actually checking out their financial aid estimator, or even asking the financial aid office for an estimate.  We found that they were pretty accurate about what we could afford each year.

You can expect to pay what the Federal Government says you can pay--which is the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) from your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). I doubt the individual institutions will give your student more than cost of attendance (COA) minus EFC. I have experience with one of the eight and that's what they provide. My student was definitely one of the few on his team receiving FINAID.

But I agree, the financial calculator should provide a very rough estimate although in the end (in my experience) our EFC is what we paid. Which was great for two years while I had two in school concurrently (EFC split 50/50 between students).

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