When you look at the price tag on a college education, it can seem anywhere from unreasonable to impossible. The more you dig into it however, the stranger college pricing becomes, with much of it revolving around a specific phrase: Expected Family Contribution.
In this article, we’re going to break this down in detail. We’ll cover what expected family contribution (EFC) is, and then dig into how it’s calculated at a number of top colleges. Our goal is to help you understand how college tuition costs are calculated, and how much you may be expected to pay if you attend a top college. Let’s jump right in!
What is the EFC?
Top colleges tend to offer primarily need-based aid. We have another article that goes into detail on the application process for this. In general, schools calculate how much money they think you can pay based on your income and assets, and that is then your expected contribution.
Now these numbers often do not line up with what you might expect, and are not the same across colleges. Two universities will get the exact same information from you, and then come back with completely different numbers for what they expect you to contribute. This is for one key reason: different colleges have different levels of monetary assets devoted to student financial aid.
Thus, even though your own assets are constant, your expected contribution will vary greatly at different schools. Different schools also consider assets differently; such as real estate, investments, and debt, and whether or not you have siblings who are also in college.
As a final note, due to how aid letters are worded, some schools may count governmental loans or parent plus loans as aid, and some may count it as part of your expected family contribution. This is because there is no set of standards for how aid letters are composed, or how aid on them is labeled. You need to read these letters carefully to fully understand the awards you are offered, and how much a school actually expects you to pay.
How EFC is Calculated at Top Schools
Each school has their own secret, proprietary formula that they use to calculate the amount of financial aid they offer to students. Some schools do work together to generate these formulas, though they have gotten into trouble for collusion on aid before. The exact details of these formulas are not public, unfortunately, but we do know how they work in general.
We are first going to outline how this works in general, and then go over the requirements top schools do release on their formulas. There are two primary components; how they calculate your total assets, and how they determine your overall need based on those assets.
Schools calculate assets based on the following factors, though different schools weight them differently:
- Total taxable income, earned by both the student and their parents/guardians
- Non-retirement investments held by the parents
- Educational savings accounts
- Liquid assets
- Property owned. Most schools will not count a primary residential home amongst these assets
- Certain assets, such as foreign currency reserves and farmland are treated differently
Some colleges also take into account other factors that may impact your ability to pay, though how much they weight these factors varies greatly:
- Any debts held by the parents or leveraged against assets owned.
- Other siblings who are in higher education (though students who have education expenses outside of college are not counted).
- Some schools will consider significant medical expenses.
The biggest difference is what schools consider to be significant assets, and how much they will expect you to pay based on your income.
School Specific Policies
Here is a table listing top schools, along with notes on their cutoff points for offering aid. Note that these are mostly soft barriers, and families earning above these amounts may still receive aid. We cover exceptions and other quirks afterwards. Finally, note that many colleges are intentionally cagey about income limits on aid; we clarify this later as well.
For quick reference, the most generous colleges are in green, the moderate ones in yellow, and the least generous in red. Schools which do not specify limits are in red, for we generally find them to be less generous with aid (which is why they don’t have firm numbers on their site bragging about how generous they are).
| College | Aid Notes |
| Boston College | No hard limits listed |
| Boston University | No hard limits listed |
| Brown College | Families earning under $60,000 pay nothing, Families earning more expected to contribute |
| Bryn Mawr College | Total family income less than $60,000, and total assets less than $500,000 |
| Caltech | No hard limits listed |
| Carnegie Mellon University | No hard limits listed |
| Case Western Reserve University | Family income under $65,000 and assets under $100,000 |
| Colgate University* | Total family income under $175,000 |
| Columbia University | Total family income under $66,000 pay nothing, limited contribution between $66,000 and $100,000; tuition free for families up to $150,000 in income with $250,000 in assets |
| Cornell University* | Total family income under $60,000, and assets under $100,000 |
| Dartmouth* | Total family income under $65,000 |
| Duke University* | Total family income under $40,000 |
| Emory University | No hard limits listed |
| Georgetown University | No hard limits listed |
| Harvard University | Total family income below $85,000 pay nothing, income between $85,000-$150,000 0-10% of income, over $150,000 proportionally more than 10% |
| Haverford College* | Total family income under $60,000; loans capped at $3,000 per year |
| Johns Hopkins University | No hard limits listed |
| Lafayette College* | Total family income under $150,000 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Family income under $75,000 pay nothing, income under $140,000 tuition free; 54% of applicants earning over $225,000 received some funding |
| New York University | Family income under $100,000 are tuition free |
| Northeastern University | No hard limits listed |
| Northwestern University | Family income of $150,000 with $250,000 in assets can expect some aid |
| Notre Dame | Family income of up to $250,000 receive scholarships of up to $50,000; incomes over $250,000 can receive scholarships |
| Princeton University | Families are generally asked to contribute 25% of income over $100,000, and 5% of assets above $150,000 |
| Rice University* | Total family income under $200,000; students whose parents earn under $75,000 will receive aid covering tuition, fees, and room and board; between $75,000 and $140,000 only tuition is covered |
| Stanford University | Total family income under $100,000 pay nothing, under $150,000 tuition free |
| Tufts University | Total family income under $60,000; loans capped at $7,000 per year for other students |
| Tulane University | No hard limits listed |
| University of Chicago | Total family income under $60,000 pay nothing, income under $125,000 tuition free |
| University of Pennsylvania | Total family income under $75,000 pay nothing, under $140,000 tuition free, over $140,000 aid available |
| University of Rochester | No hard limits listed |
| University of Southern California | No hard limits listed |
| Vanderbilt University | Total family income under $150,000 tuition free, median award for families making over $200,000 is $43,682 |
| Wake Forest University | No hard limits listed |
| Washington University St. Louis | Total family income under $75,000 |
| Wellesley College* | Total family income under $100,000; all other students can expect a maximum of $15,200 in loans over four years |
| Wesleyan University* | Total family income under $120,000 |
| Williams College* | Total family income under $75,000, all other students have loans capped at $4,000 per year |
| Yale University | Total family income under $75,000 pay nothing; aid decreases by income, income over $250,000 median scholarship of $28,700 |
Now we’ll cover some caveats which expand upon the information in this table, or which provide much needed context.
Aid Minimums and Maximums
Some colleges have a set income limit, where below that families do not have to contribute anything to their child’s education; this is the primary number we include in the table above. Some colleges have tiers of this; where under one income all expenses are covered, and under another the full cost of tuition is.
Colleges do not list maximum incomes for which they will no longer provide scholarships, if they discuss hard numbers at all. Instead, they will give an upper bound, after which scholarship dollars taper off.
Many schools offer neither an upper or lower bound for income limits to receive scholarship offers, instead making broad claims about meeting full demonstrated need, without any discussion of what they actually see as being need. Estimated price calculators can give you a snapshot on a per-college basis, though are not 100% accurate.
Required Student Payments
Regardless of other scholarship pledges or sources, most colleges have a minimum amount they expect from students, to be sourced from their savings or paid through work done over the summer or during the school year. This amount varies by school, but is generally between $2-4,000.
Parents can, of course, pay this themselves, but be aware that even if you do receive a generous aid award, there will be some requirement to pay, even if it theoretically rests on the student and not the parent.
EFC, Aid Calculators, and You
So how then can you determine your own expected family contribution at one of these top colleges? In most cases, these colleges provide a tool for doing exactly that: aid calculators. These are simple programs, where you enter some standard financial and demographic information, and they return a prediction for how much aid you will receive, and how much they will expect you to pay.
There is an important caveat to this however, namely that these predictions do not necessarily reflect the actual amount of aid you will end up getting from a particular university. Now, this isn’t from an explicit desire to deceive you, but because the amount of information these calculators ask for is far less than they get from a full financial aid application, and the full set of data can greatly change an award.
This is most common in cases which are niche, such as exceptional rare assets, convoluted financial schemas, or an odd mix of trusts and savings accounts. The harder it is to accurately portray your full assets portfolio and financial situation in a calculator, the less reliable it will be.
That said, using these calculators is still a good way to gain a sense of how much aid you might expect to receive from a certain college. We simply want to caution you not to put too much weight on it, lest you be terribly disappointed.
Each university also has their own calculations, so you will probably have to do this multiple times. You do not necessarily need to do this for every school you apply to, but if you are especially concerned about how much financial aid you will receive, or affording college entirely, we do recommend this for many of the schools on your list, to see if they are really worth applying to.
Final Thoughts
No matter how expensive college gets, universities still expect you to pay for it, at least to some degree. How much of this they expect varies an extreme amount from college to college and student to student, but there is always a need for students to be aware of this financial obligation. We hope that this article has given you a thorough explanation of this somewhat opaque term, and what colleges may expect of you.
If you are looking for more personalized advice on finding and applying for financial aid, or any other aspect of the college applications process, then Ivy Scholars can help. We have a deep understanding of what colleges are looking for, and are well versed in disambiguating a very esoteric process. Schedule a free consultation today to learn more; we’re always happy to hear from you.
