Yale Daily News

While this is a great move for Penn, unfortunately the financial aid program at Penn still won't be nearly as generous as Harvard's (or, presumably, Yale's to-be-announced) program.

Penn's aid budget will be about $110,000,000, spread over about 10,000 undergraduates. That's actually a little less than what Yale currently spends, on a per-student basis.

Harvard's aid budget will be about $120,000,000, but spread over only 6,500 undergraduates.

I predict Yale's budget will increase to about $100,000,000 for 5,200 undergraduates, putting it on par or slightly above Harvard.

What do you think?

It would certainly be embarrassing for President Levin, after all the mysterious talk about a 'major announcement' to come up short of what Harvard has done.

Yale needs to do something HUGE. If not, they are doing a great disservice to both its reputation and students

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This "major announcement" should apply to ALL Yale students, not only undergraduates. The debt burden is much greater for many graduate students because there is far more (external) scholarship support at the undergraduate level, making it very difficult for graduate students to afford their education.

My daughter will be in the class of 2012. Within 5 minutes she found out, she clicked the button. Needless to say how passionate she is to Yale. She won't go to any other schools even she would be paid to go. As a parent, I support her choice, yet I put all my faith in Yale and hope (believe) that Yale can come up with a competetive financial aid.

I know some kids who chose Harvard over yale under their parents' pressure. Now with Harvard's attractive finacial initiative, these parents will have more persuative power. Some parents even asked me if my daughter is going to apply for Harvard too. The answer is no, she loves Yale and we trust yale! But I know not that many kids are as strong willed.

I believe that a generous financial aid will be eventually paid off by students who truly appreciate the opportunity of getting Yale education.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all graduate students at Yale receive a large amount of money (as compared to students, not compared to those who are working in actual jobs) in order to fund their education? I'm not trying to devalue the education that graduate students receive or the services that they provide toward the undergraduate population, but I don't see any grad student paying $50K in tuition. (Plus, although all form of tertiary education is ultimately optional, I would argue that for any degree of career and societal success many more people experience undergraduate education, and undergrad education is more "essential," while graduate school is more of a luxury. No one is forcing you to get a PhD in British literature, after all, while if you don't get an undergrad education it's difficult to get a good job.)

In response to the last post, you may be right about PhD positions to a certain extent - although I know funding for that is very troublesome at most universities, as the PhD student may receive stipends, but not really enough to live on...which is tough when you're in school for 5-8 years.

But you shouldn't lump together all graduate students with PhD students. The students in the professional schools (law, medicine, architecture, business) are all paying $30-50k in tuition per year with significantly worse financial aid than undergraduates. Sure, many of these students may go on to make enough money to pay the loans back rather quickly - but the same could be said about all the undergraduates who go in droves to become investment bankers, so it really is unfair that professional students get worse aid than undergrads. Also, many of the professional students (especially the architects) end up not earning much for decades after getting their degrees, leaving the tuition to be a lifelong burden.