Yale will waive tuition for families earning under $200,000

Yale University said on Tuesday it will waive tuition for newly admitted undergraduate students from families with annual incomes below $200,000, and that other costs would also be waived for students whose families earn less than $100,000. The change takes effect for the class that will enroll in the fall.

The move places Yale alongside other elite institutions that have expanded financial aid, including the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yale’s full-price cost to attend is now more than $90,000 a year, and the university said the new policy essentially matches the deal offered by Harvard last year.

Yale said students from 80 percent of households in the United States would qualify for free tuition, and students from almost half the nation’s households would be eligible for an entirely free Yale education. For the lowest-income students, offerings at Yale, Harvard and some other schools include free housing and meal plans, travel allowances, medical insurance and start-up grants; previously the upper limit to qualify for no-cost attendance at Yale was $75,000 a year.

The announcement follows the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision limiting what universities may do to recruit racially diverse student bodies, and schools have said they hope stepped-up financial aid will help attract diverse applicants because race and income are often correlated.

Key Topics

Politics, Yale University, Tuition Waiver, Financial Aid, Supreme Court, Harvard University