Colleges that Meet 100% of Financial Need Depending on How You Define Need

(Updated for 2023) Probably the biggest shock families experience as they consider their college options is finding out how much they’re expected to pay for college. But I think a close second would be how few colleges are actually able to meet the family’s admittedly flawed calculated need. According to the Common Data Set and college websites only 75 colleges and universities claim to meet 100% of a student’s financial need.

If a family is able to show financial need, good luck in finding a school that will actually cover it.

Download the Complete List of Best Bet Colleges for EFC=0

Let’s start with how do you find colleges that meet 100% of need. The Common Data Set asks colleges “On average, the percentage of need that was met of students who were awarded any need-based aid.” Unfortunately, most college search websites don’t allow users to search on this information.

I created my list based on the Common Data Set information colleges post on their websites. I included all schools that claimed to have met 99% or more of need among freshman. This netted me 67 colleges. Then I used the IPEDS data on institutional aid to identify other colleges likely to be meeting 100% of need but didn’t post their Common Data Set information. After checking their websites, I added eight more schools to the list.

This included Wake Forest which states on its website that “we meet 100% of the demonstrated financial need of eligible admitted undergraduate students, with grants, scholarships, work-study, and subsidized loans.” Yet, it reported meeting only 96.9% of freshman need on its posted common data set.

And ultimately, they aren’t very likely to get into one of these select few because, well, most of them are one of the select few. Almost two-thirds of the colleges have acceptance rates of 20% or less. Only one is over 50%. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the schools were ranked in the top 50 for US News Best College Rankings for National Universities or Liberal Arts Colleges.
You just can’t help but think, “wow, prestigious and generous too, no wonder they’re such great schools!”

Actually, I have to admit, I can help myself.

What meeting 100% of need looks like

Why? Because of the 75 schools with 500 or more full-time undergraduates, 38 had an average net price after gift aid of over $8,000 for families with incomes of $30,000 or less. Two schools, Lafayette and Harvey Mudd, had averages of over $20,000. A total of 27 had an average of less than $5,000 for this category.

I use $8,000 since virtually all students will qualify for the $5,500 Direct Federal Student loan. When you add in the mandatory student contribution many of the schools require, I can see where an $8,000 average net price is reasonable. However, we are talking about the lowest income category. I’m sure these kids have plenty of expenses that won’t fall under the Total Cost of Attendance which is why I mentioned the number under $5,000 as well.

There are 152 other colleges and universities that have an average net price of $8,000 or less for the lowest income category but only 38 among the 75 schools claiming to meet 100% of need. Does that sound like meeting full need to you?

Colleges get to define demonstrated need

Chances are that most of the schools claiming to meet 100% of need are using their own special definition of demonstrated need since 72 require students to submit the PROFILE as part of their financial aid application. That’s the financial aid application that wants to know your home equity which the FAFSA doesn’t and maybe the year and make of the car you’re driving. Of those using the PROFILE, 68 also require the Non-custodial supplement.

Boston College explicitly states that “Boston College does not meet the expected family contribution determined by the FAFSA. We meet 100% of the need that is based on our determination of your institutional expected family contribution.” It’s their money, they get to decide how to distribute it.

Furthermore, the PROFILE is the form that low-income students don’t find out if they qualify for the fee waiver until sometime while completing their application. Maybe that’s why there are so few freshman receiving Pell Grants at these schools. In fact, over 40% of the schools wouldn’t meet the Education Trust’s proposed bottom-line standards for the minimum percentage of freshman with Pell Grants.

It’s really about priorities

Now I know that some would argue that colleges simply can’t admit more poor students if they’re going to meet 100% of financial need, no matter how they may decide to define it. Well then, how about we just compare these elite schools among themselves? And let’s avoid the entire income category issues. Let’s take a look at the percentage of freshman receiving Pell Grants compared to the average endowment per student (see the list below.)

Among the 75 schools, the percentage of freshman receiving Pell Grants range from a high of 29% to just 8%. If you graph the two numbers, there really doesn’t seem to be any relationship between the two. In other words, the percentage of freshman with Pell Grants doesn’t increase as the Average Endowment per Student increases.

Consider just the seven colleges where 21% of freshman are receiving Pell Grants. Two of schools have average endowments of less than $200,000 per student while a third is under $400,000. The remaining four schools have endowments of over $1,000,000 per student. Maybe they should visit the other schools and learn something about doing more with less.

Name	% Freshman Receiving Pell Grants (20-21)	Endowment per Student
University of Southern California	21	$135,972
Yale University	21	$1,869,708
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	21	$121,337
Columbia University	21	$367,973
Pomona College	21	$1,275,918
Amherst College	21	$1,288,372
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	21	$1,610,154

 

They aren’t meeting need if you have to pay it back

One last thing to know about colleges claiming to meet 100% need. They aren’t reporting this to the federal government. It’s information that is collected as part of the Common Data Set (CDS). Publishers like US News use the CDS information to create their rankings and college search websites.

The reason I’m telling you this is because the CDS does not use the same definitions as required by the federal government. The government defines average net price as the amount families pay after gift aid. It doesn’t include any loans or work study funds.

However, the CDS definition allows colleges to count subsidized loans as meeting need. Even though it’s only the interest that the government is subsidizing, the schools get to claim the entire amount in their calculations. So you really need to check with the individual schools to find out if it’s using loans as part of the financial aid award to meet 100% of need.

Now you know why this is a list of colleges of those that “claim” to meet 100% of need and why I’m not necessarily impressed with their generosity. You can find information on all of these colleges and more in the DIY College Rankings Spreadsheet.

Colleges that Meet 100% of Financial Need
(Self-Reported)

Name	Type	ST	Full-time Under-graduate	% Admitted	% Freshman Receiving Pell Grants (20-21)	Avg Net Price by Income $0-$30,000 2020-21
Amherst College	Pri	MA	1,863	9	21	$4,625
Babson College	Pri	MA	2,656	25	19	$18,034
Barnard College	Pri	NY	2,744	11	18	$17,166
Bates College	Pri	ME	1,922	17	8	$4,735
Boston College	Pri	MA	9,702	19	12	$12,320
Bowdoin College	Pri	ME	1,881	9	16	$4,531
Brown University	Pri	RI	6,889	6	14	$4,849
Bryn Mawr College	Pri	PA	1,332	39	17	$14,782
California Institute of Technology	Pri	CA	973	4	10	$10,755
Carleton College	Pri	MN	1,952	18	17	$14,936
Carnegie Mellon University	Pri	PA	6,441	14	14	$14,879
Case Western Reserve University	Pri	OH	5,355	30	17	$18,240
Claremont McKenna College	Pri	CA	1,305	11	23	$249
Colby College	Pri	ME	2,232	9	14	$3,982
Colgate University	Pri	NY	3,067	17	13	$10,923
College of the Holy Cross	Pri	MA	3,047	43	13	$9,920
Colorado College	Pri	CO	1,969	14	19	$10,023
Columbia University	Pri	NY	7,792	4	21	-$3,429
Connecticut College	Pri	CT	1,735	41	17	$19,605
Cornell University	Pri	NY	15,121	9	18	$1,862
Dartmouth College	Pri	NH	4,700	6	17	$6,376
Davidson College	Pri	NC	2,029	18	15	$7,163
Denison University	Pri	OH	2,279	28	14	$12,160
Dickinson College	Pri	PA	1,969	48	20	$1,245
Duke University	Pri	NC	6,940	6	12	$2,945
Emory University	Pri	GA	7,119	13	19	$9,311
Franklin and Marshall College	Pri	PA	2,349	38	25	$14,608
Georgetown University	Pri	DC	6,764	12	14	$596
Hamilton College	Pri	NY	2,013	14	18	$7,555
Harvard University	Pri	MA	6,161	4	22	$1,754
Harvey Mudd College	Pri	CA	827	10	13	$21,439
Haverford College	Pri	PA	1,342	18	16	$6,923
Johns Hopkins University	Pri	MD	5,894	8	20	-$2,634
Kenyon College	Pri	OH	1,755	37	10	$13,244
Lafayette College	Pri	PA	2,550	41	10	$24,133
Macalester College	Pri	MN	2,080	31	25	$11,680
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Pri	MA	4,326	4	21	-$6,711
Middlebury College	Pri	VT	3,626	13	19	$5,105
Mount Holyoke College	Pri	MA	2,082	52	29	$7,687
Northeastern University	Pri	MA	20,250	18	13	$13,099
Northwestern University	Pri	IL	8,404	7	20	$8,911
Oberlin College	Pri	OH	2,741	34	8	$13,705
Occidental College	Pri	CA	1,870	38	18	$13,983
Pitzer College	Pri	CA	871	18	14	$985
Pomona College	Pri	CA	1,556	7	21	$2,285
Princeton University	Pri	NJ	4,746	4	18	$5,761
Reed College	Pri	OR	1,406	44	11	$14,733
Rice University	Pri	TX	4,037	9	17	$5,578
Scripps College	Pri	CA	908	30	9	$17,911
Skidmore College	Pri	NY	2,561	31	12	$11,889
Smith College	Pri	MA	2,357	30	19	$11,678
St Olaf College	Pri	MN	2,982	47	22	$9,478
Stanford University	Pri	CA	6,157	4	20	-$1,975
Swarthmore College	Pri	PA	1,533	8	22	$10,638
Trinity College	Pri	CT	2,212	38	15	$8,252
Tufts University	Pri	MA	6,082	11	11	$8,299
Union College	Pri	NY	2,082	47	14	$10,627
University of Chicago	Pri	IL	7,351	6	14	$2,993
University of Florida	Pub	FL	33,060	30	22	-$208
University of Miami	Pri	FL	11,307	28	14	$19,275
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Pub	NC	18,756	20	21	$4,908
University of Notre Dame	Pri	IN	8,949	15	12	$10,918
University of Pennsylvania	Pri	PA	10,213	6	19	-$6,500
University of Richmond	Pri	VA	3,172	29	17	$13,287
University of Southern California	Pri	CA	19,533	13	21	$12,404
University of Virginia-Main Campus	Pub	VA	17,173	21	13	$8,987
Vanderbilt University	Pri	TN	7,061	7	18	$4,752
Vassar College	Pri	NY	2,456	20	19	$10,697
Wake Forest University	Pri	NC	5,417	25	10	$7,527
Washington and Lee University	Pri	VA	1,831	19	10	$769
Washington University in St Louis	Pri	MO	7,187	13	16	$3,263
Wellesley College	Pri	MA	2,353	16	22	$5,206
Wesleyan University	Pri	CT	3,031	19	18	$4,449
Williams College	Pri	MA	2,043	9	20	$718
Yale University	Pri	CT	5,898	5	21	$1,717