FYI: Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting in 2025 by Chris Peterson SM '13

First, let me start with a venerable and ancient blogger apology: sorry for not blogging much lately. With my new-ish role —  Director of Communications and Special Projects — I am doing more writing than ever, but the kind that is often read by a half dozen people within MIT. It’s sort of like playing Elden Ring on a dex/faith build: small, fast melee weapons with the occasional distance spellcasting.⁠01 In fact, now that I think of it, many aspects of working at MIT are like playing <em>Elden Ring</em>. When I started working here 15 years ago, I was without question a <a href="https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tarnished_(Protagonist)">maidenless Tarnished of no renown.</a> I began by trying a strength build but was quickly and easily crushed by much higher level opponents and had to respec to dex/faith and learn new tactics as I explored a world that somehow got larger the more I explored it. I am still Tarnished but <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C9Q7S2WRIZX/?hl=en&img_index=1">no longer maidenless.</a> Meanwhile, in <a href="https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/author/ceri/">Ceri</a> I have a spirit summons (mimic tear?) to assist me in various challenges as I continually upgrade my skills and abilities. In this CMS thesis, I —

Anyway, here is today’s Golden Vow, via MIT News:

Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting next fall, thanks to newly expanded financial aid. Eighty percent of American households meet this income threshold.

And for the 50 percent of American families with income below $100,000, parents can expect to pay nothing at all toward the full cost of their students’ MIT education, which includes tuition as well as housing, dining, fees, and an allowance for books and personal expenses.
…

These new steps to enhance MIT’s affordability for students and families are the latest in a long history of efforts by the Institute to free up more resources to make an MIT education as affordable and accessible as possible. Toward that end, MIT has earmarked $167.3 million in need-based financial aid this year for undergraduate students — up some 70 percent from a decade ago.

You can read more in the article, but basically, in Admissions and SFS, we are mission-driven to make MIT a magnet for the most talented students in the world interested in an education centered on science and technology, and to make it accessible to the best students regardless of their financial circumstances. That’s why our financial aid meets full need, our admissions is need-blind, and we don’t have an admissions preference for the children of alumni or donors (which can be seen in the public data from economists at Opportunity Insights). We hope that these new, clearly communicable policies⁠02 I am obligated to note that while these policies are clearly formulated, some exceptions may apply, chiefly around unusual wealth atypical of a given income level. For example, let’s say you have family money from a Mr. Beast giveaway, and technically have a low income because your parents have decided to use that wealth to pay their expenses while they farm and sell quail eggs at the Northampton farmer’s market. In such a case, we may ask that you use some of your Feastables inheritance to pay for MIT. The goal of these policies, however, are to help the vast majority of people with a typical distribution of assets. If you want an estimate of what MIT will cost for you, you can <a href="https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-attendance/estimate-your-cost/">estimate your costs using our calculators</a>, which are currently being updated with these new policies as I write this blog post; however, know they they don’t take into account the full range of aid that we offer, since they are just estimators. Honestly the only way to know how much aid MIT will give you is to get in and then receive your award. will help make everyone understand that if they are admitted to MIT, they will be able to afford to attend. And I wanted to make sure everyone who reads the blogs knows that.