Why Financial Aid Matters So Much
Financial aid packages to students are funded from multiple sources. Each year, approximately 5 percent of Dartmouth’s endowment is “spun off” and allocated toward student tuition and the associated costs of attendance. But that alone is not enough to cover the amount the College spends per year on each student.
Dartmouth charges $80,304 for undergraduate tuition, room, and board, even though it spends $139,000 per student per year. Financial aid covers this gap between the real cost and the tuition charged, and the Dartmouth College Fund (DCF) fills the financial aid gaps left from scholarship endowments and student need.
The DCF is still the largest source of the financial aid that more than half of students rely on each year. Gifts to the DCF allow Dartmouth to provide 100% of demonstrated need for each of these students for all four years.
All DCF gifts go to work immediately for students in the same year they are given, and then on July 1—the start of the new fiscal year—the fund begins to grow again.