•Students whose family income is $100,000 and below will attend Harvard College free of charge—an increase from the prior income threshold of $85,000.
•Students whose family income is $200,000 and below will be granted “free tuition plus”: their financial aid will cover the full cost of tuition ($56,550 of the 2024-2025 term bill) and they will be evaluated individually for further aid to cover other billed expenses such as room, board, and fees (respectively, $12,922; $8,268; and $5,126).
•For students whose family income exceeds $200,000, “tailored financial aid” will be extended depending on Harvard’s evaluation of individual circumstances.
These enhancements apply to the entire enrolled College cohort, not just members of the class of 2029 who matriculate in August. According to the announcement, 55 percent of undergraduates receive financial aid; they and their families paid an average of $15,700 during the 2023-2024 academic year, when the term bill was $79,450.
The changes in competitive context… Since Princeton eliminated loans from its aid program in early 2001, and the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI) debuted in 2004 (making the cost of attendance zero for students whose family income was $40,000 or less), peer institutions have engaged in heightened competition to make their need-blind aid packages both more generous—covering more families—and easier to understand. The College upped the income threshold to $60,000 in 2006 (and eliminated loans in 2007), and then again to $85,000 in 2023.
In recent years, other institutions have seized the financial-aid initiative from Harvard, in two ways.
First, of course, is the money: As reported in March 2024, when the College announced admissions data on the class of 2028 , both Princeton (which is fully endowed for financial aid, unlike the FAS) and Stanford had raised their income threshold for free attendance to $100,000 for the class of 2027. Upping the ante, on March 25, 2024, Dartmouth announced that a $150-million bequest would enable it to nearly double its free-attendance threshold from $65,000 of family income to $125,000—the highest in the country—effective with that fall. More limited programs at Duke and the University of Virginia made attendance tuition-free for students from local families with incomes under $150,000 (North and South Carolina) or $100,000 (Virginia), respectively, presenting still more competition. And most recently, MIT announced last November that beginning this autumn, undergraduates from families with incomes below $100,000 would attend free of charge (an increase from a $75,000 threshold), and those with family incomes below $200,000 would attend tuition-free (up from $140,000). The University of Pennsylvania will match the MIT tuition-free threshold (while retaining a $75,000 family income standard for zero-cost attendance).
Second, to overcome families’ sticker shock at posted $80,000-plus term bills (a strong deterrent to applying), the way in which aid is described is shifting.