This is a huge topic right now on CC.
Thought will let you know.
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/12.13/99-finaid.html

I read about this! Good for them, I think! Maybe the outrageous inflationary trend in post-secondary ed is reversing.

A girl can dream, can't she?

At least it's an incredibly brilliant PR move by Harvard!

Let's hope this is the wave of the future, not a flash in the pan.
Not hopeful this will be a realistic policy in 10, maybe 7 years. Here's hopin.

Glad to see that huge endowment being used for something like this. I'm particularly glad to see home equity taken out of the fin aid calc, wonder whether small businesses are still considered equity to be drawn against.

Apparently news in a similar vein is to come from Yale shortly. I would expect that anyway, but sounds as though it has been in planning for a bit. Article is in Hartford Courant here.

Wow! Good schooling cheap. Can life get any better? :-)

Showed the article to my dd and now she's thinking about it...

As she should be ! How old is she?

She just turned 14, and is in 9th grade. Actually, she wants to go to Wheaton College and study to be a primary school teacher--she loves to teach second through fourth graders.

She also has been studying voice and piano, and would take some of that at Wheaton, and do theater--they have a good theater department and a great music school.

It is indeed a great news. Thanks for the link.

I ran the number again with college board EFC calculator. The future looks much brighter.

http://apps.collegeboard.com/fincalc/efc_welcome.jsp

The new policy will help those middle/upper middle class families with significant income and significant home equity. But if you have a lot of asset outside of home equity like stock, bond, or business equity then the new policy may not be that useful to you.

But before you sell your stock and put the money into your home (this is legal), make sure that your kids get into Harvard first. :-)

^^ totaly agree.
After reading a lot about financial aid at top colleges one comes to a very, very weird conclusion - saving for education is not as wise as you might think. Especially if your kids are smart.

One more article on this subject.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/29tuition.html?pagewanted=1&ref=education