Yale College on Feb. 10 announced the term bill for the 2025-2026 academic year and reaffirmed its commitment to make an undergraduate education at Yale affordable to all students and their families through its need-based financial aid program.
The Yale College term bill — which includes tuition, housing, and meals — will increase by 3.9% from $87,150 to $90,550. Tuition will be $69,900, and housing and meals for students who live on campus will be $20,650.
Yale’s need-based financial aid policies ensure that Yale College students who currently receive a Yale scholarship grant will see their grant increase in lockstep with any increase in the term bill, said Kari DiFonzo, director of undergraduate financial aid. “If a family’s financial circumstances stay the same, their net cost will stay the same,” said DiFonzo, adding that 55% of Yale College students currently receive need-based aid.
Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, reported that the undergraduate financial aid budget for the 2023-24 academic year was $257 million — a figure that has more than tripled since the 2007-08 academic year, when Yale launched the first of several major enhancements to its undergraduate financial aid policy.
University campus leaders recently announced that Yale College will increase its class size by 100 students per year and that the university will maintain its “world-leading programs in admissions and financial aid.”
“Yale College’s extraordinary financial aid policies are at the cornerstone of delivering its mission,” Quinlan said. “Our decades-long commitment to admitting all students regardless of their financial need, and meeting 100% of that need, has made Yale College more diverse and more excellent. Maintaining that commitment as we increase the class size will ensure that costs will not be a barrier for the world’s most promising students.”
Every family of an undergraduate student whose income and assets demonstrate that they cannot afford the full cost of attendance receives a Yale financial aid offer with a Yale Scholarship grant. More than 3,500 undergraduates currently receive financial aid from Yale, with an average Yale grant of almost $68,000 — an amount that exceeds the current cost of tuition.
Yale College does not expect parents earning less than $75,000 annually — with typical assets — to make any contribution toward the cost of their child’s education, Quinlan said. The financial aid offers for these families, which are known as zero parent share offers, cover the full cost of all billed expenses — tuition, housing, the meal plan, and hospitalization insurance — as well as travel to and from New Haven. A record 21% of the current first-year class received one of these zero parent share offers. One in four first-year students qualify for a federal Pell Grant, and more than one in three are first-generation college students or from a lower-income family.
For nearly 60 years Yale has considered applications for admission without regard for a prospective student’s ability to pay — and has met the full demonstrated financial need of all students. Since 2008, Yale has not used loans to meet families’ financial need, and more than 85% of recent graduates have left Yale with no student loan debt.
While there is no income cutoff for financial aid eligibility, families with incomes below $150,000, on average, are not asked to pay tuition for their students’ education, and many families with over $200,000 in annual income receive significant need-based aid from Yale. Scholarship grants range from a few thousand dollars to more than $85,000 per academic year. All financial aid offers are based entirely on a family’s demonstrated financial need.
Prospective students and their families can get an estimate of their Yale cost, accounting for financial aid, in just a few minutes using Yale’s Quick Cost Estimator, at the Yale Undergraduate Admissions website.
