ALL colleges do that to some degree. Even state/public school. SAT/ACT scores are definitely used as a MAJOR admissions factor at the Ivy league colleges and other high-end universities. My Daughter score Math-800, English -800 and writing -750. The top universities were recruiting her. Some universities offered her a full scholarship even though she never applied. Her first choice was Harvard, but settled for MIT because they offered her an academic scholarship. Harvard doesn’t offer academic scholarships anymore (many universities/colleges don’t). Scholarships are based on financial need ONLY. If you get accepted to Harvard and your parents’ income is less then $150,000 - Free tuition room and board.
To Mike’s factual post, I will add that SAT/ACT scores are needed for most admissions decisions because of the possibility/probability of grade inflation at some high schools.
Because college admissions officers aren’t privy to the realities of grade inflation, they must rely on something that objectively differentiates high-achieving students who actually earned their grades, from students who attended schools where A & B grades were handed out like candy.
After working in the field of college counseling for close to 4 decades, I can tell you that the final acceptance decision at the most competitive colleges & universities frequently comes down to the extracurricular pursuits of students while they were in high school. After the admissions people separate the wheat from the chaff via standardized test scores, it is the kid who worked in a science research lab while in high school, or who formed his/her own software company, who will get the acceptance letter.
This is why the most competitive universities have such a low acceptance rate. For example, Princeton typically accepts only 4% of those who apply.
"I honestly don’t get why the cutoff for financial aid is so high everywhere. You mentioned Harvard starts helping out at $150,000, but the 2026 Federal Poverty Level for a family of four is only $33,000. That means $150,000 is way past actual poverty—it’s literally in the top 20% nationwide! Still, people talk about the ‘middle-class squeeze’ starting there, and a lot of families making that much claim they’re struggling. It blows my mind that schools like Rice offer free tuition up to $200,000, and Princeton goes all the way to $250,000. What are they thinking?
To me, this whole ‘poverty’ line for well-off families is just classic lifestyle creep. People get a raise and immediately blow past it, spending money they don’t even have yet because they assume they’ll keep making more. They take on short-term stress just to live large early, but then they do the exact same thing with the next raise. Eventually, they trap themselves into living paycheck to paycheck, no matter how much they make."
What else should colleges do with their endowments, if not to make education available to a lot more people? Princeton’s endowment is now at $43 BILLION, and Harvard is sitting pretty with more than $60 BILLION. If their mission is to educate, this seems like a logical use of their funds.
Yes some people do that but you act like you are the only person in the world who does things right.
Harvard’s tuition plus room and board for undergraduates is almost $90,000 for 2026. A family with gross income of $150,000 could never afford to send their child to a university that expensive on their own. That would mean that only the rich could afford to send their children to Harvard or any other Ivy League university. They actually want a diverse student body, and the need scholarships allow intelligent, hard working students from anywhere to compete for a seat in class.
My sister and I took advantage of a similar situation in the early 1970s. Our father died from military service injuries and we got up to $2000 a year for college. That paid for half of my expenses and all of my sister’s. My mother was an x-ray technician and made about $8000/yr. Without our government benefits we never could have afforded the places we went.
A family of four with an income of $250k would probably have take home pay of only about 190k, after Federal taxes. State/local taxes would reduce it even more, and then there are the costs of housing and food. Spending at least half of one’s disposable income on one kid’s annual tuition doesn’t leave much for that family to spend on home heating, clothing, gas, healthcare, insurance of various types, and other necessities. Hence, as their endowments have grown, colleges are extending big grants to families with… supposedly… high income.
Maybe I am, I was raised not to live beyond my means, I never tied to keep up with the Jones. We have bought five homes over the years, always paid cash, never had a car loan, and carry no credit card debt. Paid for the kids college education at time of enrolment, and are helping out with the grandkids… After serving for over 30-years in the Air Force (as an Enlisted…). I retired and then started giving back as a volunteer at the VA Hospital in the spinal cord injury (SCI) unit and the Occupational Therapy Clinic, and volunteered as a Computer Instructor at two counties libraries and a local senior center…
I do not consider myself special and I identify myself like my cat, who is quiet and reserved until he is riled and the claws come out and I have never tried to impress folks with the type of car I drive…
What endowments are intended for and what they are used for are not the same thing… The College Endowments are intended to function as perpetual nest eggs, using investment returns to fund scholarships, research, and long-term academic health. But there are numerous instances where the expenditures are at the very least controversial, highly criticized, and sometimes outright illegal uses of endowment funds.
Let’s see, what might a university is an endowment for…? In 2024 a massive class-action lawsuit targeted 17 elite universities, including Yale, Columbia, MIT, and Georgetown settled the antitrust lawsuit for a quarter of a Billion Dollars… The lawsuit proved that these schools conspired to limit financial aid competition and artificially inflate attendance costs. And they routinely favored the children of ultra-wealthy donors to boost their endowments. As of late 2024, ten of the universities settled the antitrust allegations for a combined $284 million.
New York University (NYU) revealed that NYU used its financial resources to provide low-interest, forgivable loans for luxury vacation homes. High-profile university administrators and faculty received millions of dollars in loans to buy secondary homes in affluent areas like the Hamptons, Fire Island, and rural Connecticut…
Princeton University in the largest donor-intent lawsuits in history, the Robertson family sued Princeton University. Princeton had misdirected more than $100 million in earmarked endowment funds… Princeton eventually settled the case by returning $100 million…
University of New Hampshire (UNH) used a $4 million estate gift left by a long-time university librarian intended to support the library—to fund a massive electronic football scoreboard and a career center….
I could go on but it would only show that colleges and universities operate more as a money making machine rather than an institution of higher earning, er, rather, I meant “higher learning”…
I’ve only had a car loan once, paid it off in 2 years. Part of that is I’m a mechanic, and I buy, fix and drive the cars that other people get rid of. I did take a car loan once, 0.9% interest was a good deal to use someone else’s money.
I view that as a statistical impossibility.
The average home price in my zip code is $710K. But let’s say you find a home out in the sticks or in a neighborhood that required bars on your windows for $500K. If my 19 year old son lands a $100K job right out of college at 21, and is able to save half of what he takes home (how could that happen?) that’s still 13 years of working and eating ramen and beans in order to buy a house.
My wife and I were 25 when we bought our first house, and that took 3 jobs and no kids. I don’t see any way my kids can buy a house at 25.
The home we live in now was bought for $300k in 2003 and it has now appreciated as you indicated to that ridiculous value now… Our first home cost $87k in 1984, and being in the military lived in 17-different locations, in 9-different countries, on 6-different continents. And when we were stationed in the US, we never lived in the sticks…
We never sold a house where we did not make a profit. Living in communities with active military presence certainly helped as we were leaving, someone was always coming to replace me… And we did not use that profit to upgrade our homes, we maintained the same lifestyle.
In college I had and economics professor who bragged that he was in debt for over $4 million (1973 – big money then…) and he could not feel “richer…” He bragged about the advantages of “Leverage” using the bank’s money to earn income based on the appreciation of the property he owned…
He discounted all the interest he was paying on those properties and I know you can make money doing this, but if money was so easy to make like this, why are there so many seminars being conducted by “professionals who hawk” the advantages or Flipping Homes… If their ideas were so easy to make money, why are they not spending their time flipping homes verses trying to drum up folks to attend their seminars…
As for your kids affording a home, why does a 25-year old think they’ve earned the right to own their own home. How many mechanics 25-years old can call themselves a Master Mechanic, what 25-years old plumber can call themselves a Master Plumber, do either of these two own their own business, do they have the tools, the training, and business to affords all the expenses associated with all that is going on…
Even white collar 25-year olds are still cutting their teeth in their trade, lawyers are still mot much more than legal clerks at the age, even doctors are still residents working 24-hour shifts…
But I am still curious why you think your 25-year kids have earned to right to buy a home when their resume and work experience probably does not even fill one page?
What, is this like voting or buying cigarettes? You need to be a certain age to do it? You need to have climbed the ladder of success to put a roof over your head? How much time should people spend making the landlord’s mortgage payment instead of their own? I’m not sure what your point is. Save your money until you can pay cash? Realistically in today’s market (or anytime in the last 15 years), how old would you have to be to have saved that much?
I had a couple of cousins who stayed living “at home” until they got married and had a significant sum for a down payment, but that involves living with parents until your late 20’s. No way.
Renting doesn’t put anything in your pocket, paying a mortgage does, as you said…you’ve never sold a house without a profit. Shouldn’t you start that process sooner rather than later?
Now cars and payments? That’s a different story.
Re-read my comment. You completely misunderstood it. Financial aid for Harvard ENDS at $150,000. If your family earns $33,000 and the kids gets accepted to Harvard - FREE TUITION ROOM AND BOARD. The reason my daughter didn’t get any scholarship from Harvard is because my wife’s and my income are well above the $150,000. Any income UNDER $150,000 and your child will get FREE TUITION ROOM AND BOARD at Harvard (and many other universities),
Almost impossible to do today in many areas of the country. Average home price in town I live at is in is over $750,000. Average price of a home in Portsmouth is over $1,000,000. You have that much cash lying around? Home prices have drastically outpaced income growth.
I was able to. So were many other engineers I worked with were able to buy a home @25. But that was 50 years ago. Today’s home prices have so outpaced income growth, it’s ■■■■ near impossible for 2 25yo do buy a home. My daughter and her fiancé bought a home (in Boston) when they both graduated from Harvard Grad school. Both have degrees in Chemical engineering or Bio-Chemical. They are definitely the exception with a combined income over $300,000. But they live in Boston, so they don’t need a car which brings down their yearly expenses. They rent one if they travel outside the city.
One of the most memorable lines I remember from my Dad came during a sales call some guy made to him. “I’m not interested”. “I never met a person who wasn’t interested in making money”. “If you’re so good at making money, what are you doing calling me?”…
I definitely lost money on my last sale. Victim of downturn. However, I then got a deal on the house I was buying to replace it since the entire market was depressed. Whether I made money (profit) on prior sales would depend on the inflation over time and if I downsized. To date, the money has been reinvested in ever more expensive properties.
I always get a mortgage but pay them off early. Typically within 9 years or less. This helped me to continue to move up the ladder so to speak.
In my last sale, every single couple that was in their 20s or 30s had Mom and Dad funding the purchase. This seems to be the norm now, no younger adults can fully fund a decent sized home that isn’t a gut situation in this area. And those are few and far between…
Let’s address your “Landlord’s Mortgage” question… and in the meantime, change your focus from the emotional unfairness of the housing market to the financial realities and hidden risks of premature homeownership.
You’ve not considered the “Unrecoverable Costs” of Buying: When you buy, you aren’t just paying down a mortgage. You are paying property taxes, homeowners insurance, HOA fees, and mortgage interest. None of that money builds equity—it is just as “gone” as rent.
Next, the bane of home ownership, “Maintenance and Repair”: A renter’s housing cost is the maximum they will pay each month. A homeowner’s mortgage is the minimum they will pay. When a roof needs replacing or a HVAC system dies, that costs thousands of dollars that a young or low-savings buyer often has to put on high-interest credit cards.
Sure, living with your parents in your late 20s requires some sacrifice, but look at the trade-off. By staying home, you aren’t just saving a down payment—you are avoiding a massive cash-drain during your peak compounding year. That is if you are actually saving for that down payment; or since you are living “RENT-FREE” you are spending all that extra cash on a new car, a new Big-screen TV, a new Gaming Computer, the newest Phone, and all those subscriptions that come with the care-free lifestyle with Mom cooking your meals and doing your laundry…
We also bought our first home in our mid-30’s… Do you really believe that a bank will offer your kids at 25, with their 670 FICA score, a good interest rate, I think not, if they are approved at all…
All of those are just a FRACTION of the mortgage.
As a landlord who’s owned almost a dozen properties over the years…Trust me - many of those costs get passed down to the renter.
Maybe YOUR kids have a FICA score of 670. I know my daughter and son both have FICA scores north of 700. And my daughter and her fiancé did get a home loan on a home in Boston for over $900,000 when they were UNDER 25. As I said they are the exception because of their jobs and income. Home prices have gone nuts in the Boston/New England area. A good part of that is investors that account for over 30% of all home sales.
If you re-read my comment, the point I was making is how can anyone claim financial hardship when they created any “hardship” through their “Lifestyle Choices?” Big House, Fancy Car, Club Memberships, etc… I had one neighbor bragging he bought a new Big Screen TV and it was so big, it did not fit on any wall in his house where it did not block a door or window… He intended to mount it over the mantle of his fireplace but it was too tall and would not fit between the mantle and ceiling… The wife was talking to my wife that they are late on the car payments and the mortgage… that wife told my wife that they intend to trade those cars in for new ones to reset the payments… My wife tried to explain the term of “Being underwater” on car payments and that they own more on the cars than they are worth and the dealership might not accept the cars…
So, I am hard pressed to understand the sympathy being offered to those who choose a life style over financial security… And how can anyone be considered “low income” and are offered Free Education when the family is making $200,000 to $250,000 (that’s a Quarter of a Million Dollars a year…).
What does that have to do with College Financial Aid?