Harvard is going tuition-free for families making up to $200,000

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Going to Harvard just got more affordable for most of America. The Ivy League school is significantly expanding financial aid to make undergraduate admission tuition-free for families making up to $200,000 and completely free for families making up to $100,000.

Families making more than $200,000 can also qualify for aid, depending on circumstances such as the number of children in college and amount of debt they carry. Harvard estimates that 86% of U.S. families could be eligible for financial help under the new system.

Selective universities have been dangling more money to attract middle-income families as a way to diversify campuses and tiptoe back from elitist reputations. Schools including Stanford, Princeton and the University of Texas system cover tuition for students whose families earn close to or above six-figure salaries. Last fall brought a string of announcements from schools making their financial aid more generous, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Pennsylvania each boosting their free-tuition salary caps to $200,000.

The moves come as Harvard and other elite universities face public and political pressure over their response to student protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Alumni have withheld donations and second-guessed sending their children to their alma mater. An Ivy League degree is even becoming a turnoff for some employers.

Even so, admission to the schools remains fiercely competitive. Less than 4% of applicants to Harvard in the last admissions cycle got in. Making schools such as Harvard more affordable “will open up the socioeconomic ladder to a lot of families, and to networks that they didn’t have before," said Adam