Colleges with free tuition
58 colleges publish a household income under which they charge no tuition, and the cutoffs go as high as $200,000. Most families never find out they qualify, because the number they see is the sticker price. Here is every published cutoff, with what a family actually pays.
Sticker is the full published cost of attendance for one year. The last column is what a family earning under $30,000 actually paid, after aid, at that same school. Click any school for its full aid breakdown by income band.
| College | Tuition free under | Sticker price | Family under $30k pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caltech CA | $200,000 | $90,822 | $2,500 |
| Emory GA | $200,000 | $88,414 | $10,000 |
| Johns Hopkins MD | $200,000 | $83,840 | $5,500 |
| MIT MA | $200,000 | $85,960 | $4,000 |
| Penn PA | $200,000 | $87,740 | $4,200 |
| Swarthmore PA | $200,000 | $88,696 | $5,860 |
| Yale CT | $200,000 | $85,000 | $2,800 |
| Colgate NY | $175,000 | $87,070 | $3,341 |
| Dartmouth NH | $175,000 | $87,279 | $41 |
| Columbia NY | $150,000 | $89,694 | $4,570 |
| Mount Holyoke MA | $150,000 | $89,102 | $17,365 |
| Notre Dame IN | $150,000 | $84,301 | $6,200 |
| Smith MA | $150,000 | $82,890 | $1,546 |
| Stanford CA | $150,000 | $90,000 | $1,500 |
| Tufts MA | $150,000 | $92,088 | $10,526 |
| Vanderbilt TN | $150,000 | $86,756 | $5,797 |
| Wellesley MA | $150,000 | $90,250 | $2,859 |
| Brown RI | $125,000 | $89,028 | $3,200 |
| Michigan MI | $125,000 | $38,044 | $1,043 |
| UChicago IL | $125,000 | $87,390 | $6,000 |
| Pitzer CA | $120,000 | $89,742 | $15,922 |
| GW DC | $100,000 | $84,290 | $24,071 |
| Harvard MA | $100,000 | $83,000 | $0 |
| Macalester MN | $100,000 | $86,952 | $13,772 |
| NYU NY | $100,000 | $83,920 | $17,000 |
| Princeton NJ | $100,000 | $84,590 | $2,518 |
| Reed OR | $100,000 | $89,610 | $13,630 |
| Texas A&M TX | $100,000 | $33,717 | $11,454 |
| UC Santa Cruz CA | $100,000 | $43,077 | $10,872 |
| UT Austin TX | $100,000 | $30,762 | $12,157 |
| UVA VA | $100,000 | $34,300 | $11,273 |
| UVM VT | $100,000 | $36,772 | $12,015 |
| Utah UT | $100,000 | $27,400 | $10,447 |
| UC Berkeley CA | $80,000 | $38,000 | $5,800 |
| UC Davis CA | $80,000 | $38,218 | $6,200 |
| UC Irvine CA | $80,000 | $36,264 | $7,300 |
| UC Merced CA | $80,000 | $38,600 | $8,572 |
| UC Riverside CA | $80,000 | $40,285 | $8,240 |
| UC San Diego CA | $80,000 | $42,474 | $7,800 |
| UC Santa Barbara CA | $80,000 | $36,381 | $5,200 |
| UCLA CA | $80,000 | $35,529 | $8,500 |
| UNC NC | $80,000 | $29,019 | $2,004 |
| USC CA | $80,000 | $89,006 | $14,668 |
| BU MA | $75,000 | $90,207 | $10,573 |
| Brandeis MA | $75,000 | $90,224 | $13,567 |
| Carnegie Mellon PA | $75,000 | $85,990 | $8,460 |
| Cornell NY | $75,000 | $87,000 | $1,776 |
| F&M PA | $75,000 | $89,132 | $12,321 |
| Maryland MD | $75,000 | $29,996 | $3,200 |
| Rice TX | $75,000 | $83,393 | $1,200 |
| Tennessee TN | $75,000 | $30,148 | $10,029 |
| UMass Amherst MA | $75,000 | $37,122 | $13,500 |
| WashU MO | $75,000 | $87,900 | $8,500 |
| Houston TX | $65,000 | $27,484 | $10,600 |
| Rutgers NJ | $65,000 | $39,519 | $10,200 |
| Earlham IN | $60,000 | $71,158 | $16,184 |
| Oklahoma OK | $60,000 | $27,068 | $10,509 |
| SLU MO | $60,000 | $77,110 | $20,051 |
What these numbers actually mean
A published cutoff is a promise: if your household income falls under it and your finances are straightforward, the college does not charge you tuition. It is need based, so you still file the FAFSA and usually the CSS Profile, and the college verifies the income itself.
Free tuition is not always the same as free college. Room, board and fees can still be charged above a lower income threshold. That is why the last column matters more than the headline: it is the real, all in number a low income family paid at that school.
Why so few families use this
Sticker price is the number that gets published, argued about, and believed. It is also the number almost nobody at these schools pays. Families rule out colleges on a price that does not apply to them, and never open the aid page that would have told them otherwise.
See what any of these colleges would actually cost your family.
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