A significant part of the student body doesn't pay the list price for tuition, due to the large amount of various forms of tuition assistance.

I'd expect there's a difference in financial assistance between international and domestic students.

Edit: As pointed out by a response, MIT and Harvard both state that their financial aid is independent of international vs US students.

That’s not accurate for MIT or Harvard, their is no difference for many of their programs between the financial assistance given to domestic and international students.

I was an undergrad at Harvard on an F-1 visa, the financial aid package was blind to residency status. This is unusual - many private schools do discriminate - but not unheard of. Later I looked at grad opportunities at MIT primarily because - unlike many others grad schools - they did fund international students to the same level as domestic.

I took a look, and MIT and Harvard specifically state that their financial aid is independent of domestic vs international status. Thanks for pointing that out!

"However, whether you are a domestic applicant or an international applicant does not impact when or how you apply or the financial aid you are offered. Rather, this page is simply intended to be a helpful resource for people who are less familiar with the American educational system and are trying to figure out how to apply to MIT."

https://mitadmissions.org/apply/firstyear/international/

"Our financial aid policies are the same for all applicants, regardless of nationality or citizenship. All aid is based on financial need, and admissions decisions are made without regard to whether an applicant has applied for financial assistance. Harvard meets each student’s demonstrated need."

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/apply/international-a...

Good point, I had forgotten about finaid provided "internally" by the university.

Both international and domestic students at these institutions get amazing financial aid.

But at most of these schools (<10 in the US are exceptions) ability to pay can still affect who they choose to admit in the first place internationally. Whereas >100 schools practice need blind admissions for domestic students. That said Harvard/MIT should be no different between the two.

That’s not true at wealthy schools. I went to Reed (not need blind) and only half the student body there pay full price. That portion should be lower at Harvard and MIT.

Domestic students get a lot of financial aid/merit scholarships/etc. not available to international students.

As mentioned in sibling comments this is false.

Domestic students get a lot of financial aid of their parents don’t make a lot. There is no such aid for internationals.

EDIT: Apparently that not really true.

> There is no such aid for internationals.

That's not completely accurate. Both Harvard and MIT claim parity in financial aid for international and domestic students. However, there is a bit of a discrepancy in the way that income is evaluated, higher taxes abroad leading to less post-tax money even for equivalent incomes, as well as non-institutional funding that domestic students are eligible for, but foreign students are not. The overall effect is more of a shift in the distribution of incomes between international and domestic students (i.e. if you're international you will be paying more at the same parental income level), but there is still a level where attendance is basically free.

Is admission for internationals in general need blind as well at MIT/Harvard ? What about income level of people attending ?

> Is admission for internationals in general need blind as well at MIT/Harvard ?

I think that's true now. I don't remember if it was true 10 years ago when I went through this process, because I do remember submitting financial forms together with the application.

> What about income level of people attending ?

The statistics get published, but I don't think they generally get split out between international and non-international students. Anecdotally, it strongly depends on the country the person comes from. Some smaller countries gear their educational programs towards sending their top students to the top universities abroad and have appropriate recruitment programs in their public schools. For those countries the parental income distribution can be quite varied (not counting of course the taxpayer money spent to say send them around the world to international academic competitions and conferences). I think for countries that don't have such programs (usually because they have excellent domestic programs), you tend to see students come from wealthier backgrounds (that is middle class and up - I don't mean to imply that you need to be filthy rich to get in, just that participating in those activities that look good on US college applications requires a certain amount of money and parental support that needs to be supported from somewhere). That's just my sense though, I don't have any hard data.

I see. My understanding at my own institution (a big one on the west coast) is that international (undergraduate) student admission is not need blind, or wasn't until very recently, since I remember "protests" about this particular topic in the last years. Graduate admissions has never even pretended to be need blind so that doesn't apply.

A small typo in your first sentence: I assume you meant "completely inaccurate".

Oops. Fixed.

This is wrong. International students, especially from locations with good high schools but low standard of living (e.g. Eastern Europe) frequently pay next to nothing at these elite institutions.

Is there aggregate data (over the country ?) on this ? I was pretty convinced there was a significant difference between the two, and I still believe that’s the case at my own institution, but could be wrong.