Part 2: No-Loan Colleges: Middle Class Families CAN Go to College for Free!
Comprehensive, updated (January 2024) list of no-loan colleges.
We called and emailed financial aid departments, so you don’t have to!
$5500 is the loan cap most college access advisors recommend.
Not all colleges include loans in your financial aid package.
See a sample financial aid letter for a no-loan college!
See a sample financial aid letter for a no-loan college for an EFC of $0!
See a sample financial aid letter for a college without a no-loan policy!
Find the Right School and Graduate Debt-Free!
List of no-loan colleges that do not include loans as part of their aid:
Amherst College
Berea College
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Colby College
College of the Ozarks
Columbia University
Davidson College
Grinnell University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Princeton University
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Vanderbilt University
Washington & Lee
Yale University
Middle Class Families: You Can Graduate Without Loans!
Taking out loans is scary. Lots of people have opinions about whether it’s advisable to go into debt to pay off college.
Most college access professionals advise you to not exceed $5500 in loans - federal loans generally have the lowest interest rate.
Do all schools give loans as part of their financial aid package?
Not all schools give loans as part of their financial aid package! Some schools also have adopted a “no loans under $xx” policy.
"No loans under $xx" means that they will not calculate loans into your financial award. That means you get more free money. If a school does give loans, that's money you'll have to pay back - it's that much less grant/pure aid/scholarship money.
Don't confuse "no loans" with having an EFC of $0 - they're not the same!
If you have a no-loan policy, that just means that the school charges you the amount they think you can pay, and offers no loans. If you have an EFC (expected family contribution) of $0, you can still have a gap between aid and tuition if the school doesn't meet 100% of need.
Show me an example of a no-loan school where the family still has to pay!
University of Pennsylvania is a no-loan school, but this family (based on UPenn's perception of the family's ability to pay) has an EFC of $19,303.
In the example above, UPenn is covering everything up to the EFC with ONLY free money. No loans are listed in the “Grants and Scholarships to pay for college” section.
Show me an example of a school without a no-loans policy and a family with an EFC of $0.
The following is the financial aid package of a student with an EFC of $0, from Union College, which does give loans in its package:
Here, you can see that the “Federal Direct Loan - Sub” is included.
In a 100% need met with no loans school, folks with an EFC of $0 have no loans - nothing except free money.
Do some schools have partial no-loan policies?
Some schools offer no-loan policies, but only for students whose families have incomes under a certain threshold or are considered low-income by another standard. Check out our next blog entry for a list of those schools!
