At Georgetown University, 64 percent of undergraduates pay the full published price of more than $100,000 per year for tuition, fees, room, and board, with no financial aid to reduce the cost. That's according to an analysis published July 13, 2026 by Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who examined federal data on financial aid distribution across private nonprofit four-year colleges. The analysis challenges the widespread claim that "nobody pays the sticker price" at expensive universities, showing that at many elite institutions, more than half of students receive no grant or scholarship aid at all.
Among the nation's most expensive colleges—those in the priciest 10 percent—42 percent of students paid full freight during the 2023-24 academic year, according to the report. More than half of students at prestigious schools including Tufts University, New York University, and the University of Chicago receive no financial aid even as these institutions charge over $60,000 for tuition and fees alone, not counting room and board. The pattern varies widely across institutions: while about four in five students at private colleges nationwide receive some grant aid, at Georgetown only 36 percent do. Some schools like Savannah College of Art and Design charge over $40,000 but provide aid to 92 percent of students, while cheaper online institutions like Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University see half or more of their students pay the published price because sticker prices are already low.
The report describes a U-shaped relationship between published tuition prices and the share of students paying full price. Cooper writes that "among the most expensive colleges, the share of students paying the sticker price rockets back up." The analysis finds that advice to "ignore the sticker price" is misguided because "depending on the institution, students run the risk of ending up with a bill for the full cost of tuition." According to the report, this uncertainty "turns the costs of enrolling in college into a throw of the dice," since students typically don't know how much they'll pay until after they're accepted.
The lack of price transparency creates what the report describes as a dysfunctional market. Students receiving multiple acceptance letters can negotiate for better financial aid by playing schools off one another, but this requires a heavy commitment of time, effort, and application fees that most students can't manage. When acceptance letters arrive, many students face a binary choice between a hefty bill and not attending college at all. The report argues this dynamic "neuters price competition between schools and drives up costs even further," because families can't comparison shop effectively before applying. While some students land generous aid packages, others end up paying six figures with no way to predict which outcome they'll face.
The report recommends that schools adopt clearer pricing models, such as guaranteed free tuition for families below certain income thresholds or programs like Whitman College's recent initiative to set tuition at 10 percent of a family's adjusted gross income. Cooper argues the Education Department should collect and release more detailed data on the net prices colleges actually charge and could prod colleges to disclose net prices upfront. The bottom line: plenty of families do pay the sticker price at expensive universities, and the risk of doing so is something students and parents should take seriously when choosing where to apply.