MIT announced on Monday (March 8) that need-based scholarship grants will increase 12 percent next year. The Institute projects that the average MIT grant will increase from $12,400 to $13,900, and it expects to spend $33 million on undergraduate scholarships. More than half of all undergraduates receive need-based grants.
MIT also announced that all students will get the full benefit of outside scholarships without any reduction in their MIT grant or federal loan eligibility, where allowed by federal law. In addition, their families will get the full $1,500 Hope Scholarship tax credit and the $1,000 Lifelong Learning tax credit per taxpayer without any reduction of a student's MIT grant.
Tuition, room and board will increase by $1,100 or 3.6 percent, the lowest percentage increase since 1970. Of the $31,900 total, tuition will be $25,000. The actual cost to MIT of educating a student will be approximately twice that amount, as has been the pattern for the past 30 years. The difference is made up primarily through contributions by past graduates of MIT and through earnings on endowment.
In this year's freshman class of 1,047 students, more than 600 students received financial aid. Of this group, more than 200 families with incomes ranging from $80,000 to more than $140,000 had circumstances that qualified them for aid. Families earning more than $100,000 who received aid typically had at least two children in college, or other extraordinary financial circumstances.
With nearly three-quarters of all MIT undergraduates coming from public high schools, 58 percent qualified for financial aid this year and 52 percent qualified for scholarship grants from MIT.
This year, the parents of roughly 300 undergraduates who have very limited income and assets are not expected to pay anything for the student's education. About 200 of these students need to borrow or earn -- from term-time work at MIT -- the student contribution of $7,600. MIT provides scholarship funds for the remainder of their educational costs. The other 100 students have economic circumstances which are so limited that they will be expected to borrow or earn as little as $4,100.
About 25 percent of MIT students and/or their parents pay the full amount of tuition, room and board, MIT estimates. Fully 75 percent receive various forms of financial aid and educational financing. For example, about 15 percent of students who are from wealthier families who fail to qualify for financial aid from MIT nevertheless receive scholarships from sources outside MIT. Such scholarships may be based on academic merit, geography, participation in ROTC or other factors.
The tuition and financial aid for 1999-2000 were approved by the Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation and announced by President Vest at a meeting of the full Corporation, the Institute's board of trustees.
A version of this article appeared in the March 10, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 22).
