Dartmouth’s financial aid website boasts the following statement: “Our commitment: To make the full experience of a Dartmouth education affordable for you and your family. This promise is good for all four years.” To some Dartmouth students, this promise seems to have been broken.
Dartmouth is an Ivy League school with a reputation for rigorous academics and, increasingly, a generous financial aid system. It is very common to find a student who couldn’t possibly attend Dartmouth if not for the financial aid system footing a hefty portion of the $76,623 annual tuition. On one system of college ranking, Dartmouth places as the 13th most generous school in the country in terms of financial aid offerings. In countless instances, students are lifted up by the financial aid system at Dartmouth.
Unfortunately, some students are still left behind. Due to idiosyncrasies in the formulas, some students are forced to leave Dartmouth after experiencing a prohibitive decrease in their financial aid. While most sophomores are on campus this summer enjoying the rare Hanover heat—relaxing in the river, hiking the New Hampshire hills—other sophomores are gearing up for the college application season, because Dartmouth is no longer a financially feasible option for them.
One such student is Kylie Palacios, ‘21. Kylie came into Dartmouth relying heavily on her financial aid package. Over the course of two years, Kylie saw her expected family contribution increase by $15,000 dollars. Based on her family’s expected contribution freshman year, Kylie’s cost to attend Dartmouth almost exactly doubled.
Some students are forced to leave Dartmouth after … a prohibitive decrease in their financial aid
Now, this spike in tuition cost didn’t come as a complete shock; Kylie’s sister just graduated from college, and Dartmouth tries to warn families early when sibling graduation might increase the expected contribution here at Hanover. Even then, the forecasted amount that Kylie would have to pay fell short by a few thousand dollars. No matter the case, Kylie’s bill increased by $15,000, mostly because her sister graduated from college. But her sister attended college on a full scholarship, so Kylie and her family saw a great expense increase at Dartmouth without anywhere near a proportional decrease at her sister’s college. In the end, Kylie won’t be coming back to campus this fall.
Kylie’s situation isn’t exactly common, but it’s also far from unique. Another student, a ’22, anticipated their brother’s graduation from college, and sat down with the financial aid office to make sure everything “was going to be okay.” However, says the student, “when I did get my letter back it just blindsided me when they essentially took all of my financial aid away.” Sibling graduation and an “insignificant” increase in one parent’s income once again led to the expensive increase.
These stories come in addition to multiple other ’21s who are leaving Dartmouth, appealing the financial aid decision in an attempt to stay, or who are staying, but choosing to foot the many thousands of dollars increase. One student saw his family bill double, which was “more than they said it would increase.” He’ll be staying around even though the cost of attendance for him at Dartmouth is more than the combined cost his family paid for both him and his brother to attend college before his brother graduated.
These students all fell through the cracks of what may seem to be a flawed system, especially when the system promises an affordable experience “all four years” of our Dartmouth careers. The outsized increases upon sibling graduation appears particularly flawed. But still, it’s important to remember that Dartmouth is one of the most generous schools in the country when it comes to financial aid, and there may not be a better system for determining how much a family can afford, especially when it comes to siblings in college.
According to Dino Koff, the director of financial aid at Dartmouth, a decrease in the number of siblings in college is one of the two main contributors to “huge decreases in financial aid.” And the benefit families get for having a sibling at another college has nothing to do with how much the family is actually paying for that sibling. The college doesn’t ask how much the family is paying, “because we don’t drill to that level,” says Koff. “I don’t think the families would want us to,” he continues. According to Koff, this system “benefits the students the most.” When a Dartmouth student has a sibling who pays very little for his or her tuition, then the Dartmouth student still gets a large benefit. In Kylie’s case, for instance, if the college based the benefit on how much the family paid for the sibling, then she may never have received a benefit at all, since her sister was on a full scholarship.
Dartmouth’s sibling aid policy is based off of federal guidelines. As per Department of Education guidelines, The Expected Family Contribution is divided by the number of students in college. The family is then responsible for paying that fraction to Dartmouth.
As Koff explains, “It’s totally percentage-based, so the family contribution on the federal side, if you have $10,000 family contribution, if you have three enrolled, it’s $3,333 per kid.” Say two of those students graduate, leaving only one student in college. If other finances stayed the same, then, “you would have a $10,000 family contribution.”
Dartmouth bases their financial aid formulas off of this methodology and off of Dartmouth-specific methodology. Dartmouth is also committed to covering need-based financial aid, so if they deviate from the formulas, then they risk compromising their need-based status.
Yet, Dartmouth also risks hurt feelings and ill-will with the current system. Students are leaving Dartmouth because of financial aid at a time when endowments are through the roof, and the Call to Lead is seeking to make financial aid more generous.
One student expressed his discontent with the system: “It was frustrating. There did not seem to be anything that could be done to help. It was also challenging because the office seems to have different people communicating through the same contact, which makes following [up] challenging.” In the words of another student, “they’ve been pretty vague about this and don’t seem to want to disclose the process, which was frustrating.”
Koff recognizes the difficulty of the situation. “When we talk about family finances, it is a very stressful topic.” “We are as transparent as possible …. We do everything we can.” To sum up the Dartmouth’s financial aid posture, Koff says, “we love giving out money. We really do. It’s just—there are rules that we have to follow.”
Terribly greedy and dishonest administrators whom have leveraged the federal government to forward them money and leave collecting the debt to someone else, has encouraged Universities to continue to gouge students and their families with no end in sight. By the way these administrators are being paid exorbitant Sums to get money out of students. It’s a six system that needs to be ended!