Financial Aid At A Top 20 School In America For Canadians

[bob12345]

Hi all,

 

I'm wondering if anyone can shed some insight onto how much financial aid is given to canadians who get into schools like harvard and yale.  I've seen numbers floating around these forums like 350k USD to fund medical school. 

 

However, do the wealthier institutions tend to give more in scholarships?

 

For example

https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Sites/Financial_Aid/files/Guide.pdf

 

look at page 15 and 16.  Some students were given 40k for 1 year in HMS scholarship, another was given 20k. 

 

Can anyone provide insight on this? 

 

I should also mention that my parents definitely are not rich.  We are middle class in Canadian terms.

[uncharted1114]

Harvard and Yale med (and a couple other top US schools that give financial aid) use the unit loan system, which essentially caps the amount of loans that you would have to take out per year. Based on your financial situation, they first calculate your estimated family contribution, which is what the school thinks you should be able to afford to pay out-of-pocket. This amount can vary widely depending on the institution's resources and your resources, but can sometimes be negotiated after you get your package.

 

Whatever amount is left after you subtract your EFC from the total cost of attendance will be your financial aid. For example, let's say the yearly cost of attendance is 85k, and your EFC is determined to be 15k. This means that you'll receive about 70k in financial aid from the school.

 

Now that 70k is further broken down into into loans and scholarships. With the unit loan system, the first portion of your financial aid package always has to come from loans before the school will give you a grant/scholarship. So in this example, that 70k would be made up of a 33k unit loan (the number determined by HMS) and a 37k grant/scholarship). If your financial aid was determined to be 30k for example, then that 30k would all be loans because your financial need would have to surpass the unit loan amount of 33k before you would get a scholarship.

 

For schools that don't use the unit loan system, the process is essentially the same but there's no fixed amount for the loan, so your 70k in financial aid in another school could be a 40k loan+30k scholarship, or a 15k loan+55k scholarship, for example.

 

I'm also a middle class Canadian and while I can't personally speak for what a financial aid package from Harvard/Yale looks like at the medical school level, I attended one of those schools for undergrad and it was actually cheaper for me to go there than if I had stayed in Canada, but my understanding is that financial aid for med school is never going to be as generous as it is for undergrad. When I got accepted to other US med schools that didn't use the unit loan system, my need-based scholarships ranged from 15k to full-tuition, so the amount you get really depends on what kinds of resources are available at each school.

 

(Edited because I can't do basic math)