No Cost for Undergrads With Family Income Below $100K

Johns Hopkins University announced Thursday that it’s eliminating tuition, fees and living expenses for its Homewood campus undergraduates whose families make less than $100,000 a year; students whose families earn up to $200,000 will pay no tuition. It joins a wave of other institutions—especially private, selective ones—that have announced tuition guarantees.

In a news release, the university said the change “means students from a majority of American families, including middle-class families earning above the national median household income of $87,730, can attend Hopkins at no expense.”

Further, Hopkins said, “Most families with incomes up to $250,000 will continue to qualify for significant financial aid. Even those with annual incomes exceeding $250,000 may qualify, especially when there are multiple children in college at the same time.”

Most of the university’s undergrads study on the Homewood campus, in North Baltimore. The release said the new aid levels “will go into effect for eligible current students in the spring 2026 semester and for new, incoming students next fall.”

In a message to the university community, JHU president Ron Daniels said that since businessman and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $1.8 billion to the university in 2018, Hopkins’s share of Pell Grant–eligible students rose from 15.4 percent to 24.1 percent, the highest proportion in university history.

“Our financial aid investment has continued to grow, inspired by Mayor Bloomberg’s transformative gift, with generous contributions by more than 1,200 donors who have given $240 million for financial aid at Hopkins over the last several years,” Daniels wrote. “We are in their collective debt.”