Sticker price is a college's full published cost of attendance — tuition, fees, room, and board — before any financial aid. Net price is what your family actually pays after grants and scholarships are subtracted, and it varies with family income. The gap can be enormous: Harvard's published 2025–26 cost of attendance is $86,926 per year, but a family earning between $48,001 and $75,000 pays about $6,011 after aid (source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard/IPEDS data).
A family earning $75,000 falls in the $48,001–$75,000 income bracket. Across the 192 colleges in our dataset, the middle half of public colleges charge that family roughly $12,000–$18,000 per year in net price (median about $14,600), and the middle half of private colleges charge roughly $12,000–$23,000 (median about $17,200). Well-endowed private colleges that meet full demonstrated need can cost far less — at that income, Harvard's net price is about $6,011 per year (source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard/IPEDS data).
Check its net price at your family's income level instead of its sticker price. Every college profile on this site includes a net-price-by-income table built from federal College Scorecard/IPEDS data — browse all 192 college profiles to compare, or use the calculator on this page to estimate your net cost at every college on your list at once. For a full walkthrough, read our guide to paying for college and understanding net price.
The FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is the form that qualifies you for federal grants, loans, and work-study at every US college. It opens in the fall of your senior year and uses your family's prior-prior-year tax data. There is no single national deadline: each college sets its own priority deadline, and many state aid programs are first-come, first-served — so file as early as possible at StudentAid.gov.
Cost figures on this page come from our 2025–26 tuition and net-price dataset for 192 colleges (IPEDS/College Scorecard, CollegeFactual, and institutional financial-aid offices) — see the federal datasets behind these numbers in our data sources documentation.