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Yale University announced
that the college is reducing the average cost of sending
a student to Yale College by over 50 percent for families with
financial need. This new policy will apply to all
students returning to campus in the fall as well as
entering freshmen. This represents the largest increase
in spending for financial aid in the University's
history.
The reduction in costs will be spread across a broad
range of incomes. Families with incomes below $120,000
will see their contributions cut by more than 50 percent, while
most families with incomes between $120,000 and $200,000
will see cost reductions of 33 percent or more.
Families earning less than $60,000 annually will not
make any contribution toward the cost of a child's
education, and families earning $60,000 to $120,000 will
typically contribute from 1 percent to 10 percent of total family
income. The contribution of aided families earning above
$120,000 will average 10 percent of income.
Yale also is increasing the number of families who
qualify for aid, eliminating the need for students to
take loans, enhancing its grants to families with more
than one child attending college, exempting the first
$200,000 of family assets from the assessment of need,
and increasing expense allowances for foreign students
during school vacation periods. Yale calculates
financial aid by taking into consideration a family's
total income and assets, family size and number of
children in college, family medical bills, state of
residence, and a number of other factors.
The combined changes will increase Yale's financial aid
budget by more than $24 million, to over $80 million
annually. Yale also announced that it would hold its
increase in tuition, room, and board charges in
2008-2009 to the expected level of consumer price
inflation, 2.2 percent.
In 1966, Yale was the first private research university
in the United States to establish need-blind admissions,
where candidates are evaluated for admission without
regard to financial need. Yale also committed at the
same time to meet the full demonstrated financial need
of every U.S. student who was admitted. Yale awards no
merit scholarships and no athletic scholarships – all
financial aid is based solely on demonstrated need. For
over four decades, Yale has not wavered from this
commitment. In 2001 it extended this policy to foreign
students, and it has increased aid numerous times to
reduce the financial burden of a Yale education. Three
years ago, Yale exempted families with less than $45,000
in income from making a financial contribution to the
cost of attendance.
As grants to families increase dramatically, students
also will see the amount they are expected to contribute
from their own earnings fall sharply, from the current
rate of $4,400 to $2,500 per year. Students may earn
that amount by working on campus for about seven hours a
week, eliminating the need to take loans or to work
excessive hours.
Additionally, Yale will increase the adjustment for
families with additional children attending college and
add to the allowance already given to international
students to help them with expenses when school closes
for vacations.
To increase transparency, the University is building an
online calculator to provide families with a way of
estimating net cost of attendance. By this summer Yale
will have a web tool for helping families make an
initial estimate of their expected contributions.
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