Stanford Drops Home Equity from Financial-Aid Calculations

Stanford University (CA) is making changes in how it calculates undergraduate students’ financial aid to exclude the value of home equity, acknowledging that many families may be house rich but cash poor and see college as out of reach. The move, in which Stanford joins Harvard University (MA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will benefit families who live in parts of the country with high home prices. Not all schools take home values into their financial aid assessments, but for those that do it can change packages dramatically.