Penn expands financial aid for middle income families

The University of Pennsylvania today announced the Quaker Commitment, a sweeping new financial aid initiative designed to support families from middle-income backgrounds by increasing financial aid packages and guaranteeing full tuition scholarships to a greater number of students.

Effective in the 2025-26 academic year, Penn will no longer consider the value of the primary family home among assets in determining the amount of financial aid eligibility and will raise the income threshold for families eligible to receive full tuition scholarships from $140,000 to $200,000 with typical assets.

“This bold new initiative expands financial aid for more families in alignment with our commitment to have Penn’s financial aid package meet 100% of families’ demonstrated need with no loans,” says Penn Interim President J. Larry Jameson. “We are proud to launch the Quaker Commitment building on the University’s commitment to opportunity and long-standing leadership in undergraduate financial aid.”

These initiatives affect all aid-eligible undergraduate students, not just entering first-year students. About 46% of Penn’s 10,000 undergraduate students currently receive aid. The average aid package of $70,579 currently covers 76% of the total cost of attendance. By comparison, the average aid package covered 57% in 2008 when Penn’s no-loan financial aid policy was first introduced.

Penn is one of only a handful of universities to exclude home equity when determining a student’s Expected Family Contribution—the amount they are asked to pay—using financial information submitted by the family. This is expected to impact about 900 currently enrolled students with an average increase in grant aid of about $4,000. The higher income threshold for middle-income families is expected to increase packages by an average of $10,000 for an additional 180 students.

The Quaker Commitment builds on last year’s expansion of Penn’s financial aid program and the Penn First Plus initiative for lower-income families. In 2023, Penn announced that beginning with the 2023-24 academic year students whose families made $75,000 or less with typical assets—up from $65,500 in 2022-23—would receive financial aid packages that fully covered tuition, fees, housing, and dining with grants and work-study funds. This increase affected about 200 students who saw their aid packages increase by an average of $16,000 in grant funding each.

The new program is the latest step in Penn’s effort to widen access for students from all economic backgrounds while specifically responding to the needs of middle- and upper-middle income families.

“Penn is reaffirming its commitment to the core principle that a world-class education can be affordable to students from all backgrounds, not just those from lower-income backgrounds or those who are able to pay full price,” says Mark Dingfield, vice president for finance and treasurer. “We are updating these policies because it is the right thing to do for our students and their families.”

“The Quaker Commitment is designed specifically for the middle-income families we hear from who, even after receiving a need-based financial aid package with no loans, still face difficulty in meeting their expected family contribution,” says Elaine Varas, senior university director of financial aid. “These new initiatives will help close that gap for these families to make it easier for them to commit to Penn and ease their financial pressures.”

The initiative, estimated to cost approximately $6 million annually, will be funded institutionally with the expectation that donor endowed funds will be sought to provide sustained support for these increases in financial aid.