Starting in the 2026-27 academic year, Yale University will offer free tuition for families making less than $200,000 a year and will cover all costs of admitted students from households with combined incomes of under $100,000 per year, school officials said Tuesday.

This initiative follows a series of deep discounts for income-eligible students dating back to 2010. By raising the threshold again, nearly half of all U.S. households with children between 6 and 17 now qualify for financial aid packages at Yale that don’t require parents to contribute any money to a student’s education, and more than 80 percent of U.S. households are eligible for a scholarship there covering at least the cost of tuition, university officials explained.

“I am thrilled that Yale is making this important investment in affordability,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan said in a Jan. 27 news release. “With this announcement, we reiterate and reinforce Yale’s commitment to ensuring that cost will never be a barrier between promising students and a Yale College education.”

Yale officials previously announced an online price estimator tool that provides undergraduate applicants with accurate estimates of tuition and other costs to attend the school based on income.

“For more than 60 years, Yale has considered applicants without regard to their ability to pay and has provided scholarship support to meet families’ full financial need,” Pericles Lewis, Yale College dean, said in the release. “This approach has been instrumental in attracting the most talented, ambitious, and dynamic undergraduates to Yale.”

Yale’s endowment fund, which is largely supported by wealthy donors and supports financial aid, exceeds $44 billion. It increased by 11.1 percent, or $4.5 billion, in the past year, the university reported on Oct. 24.

The sticker price to attend Yale, including tuition, room and board, and other fees, was $91,950 last year, up from $82,170 for the 2021-22 academic year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The sticker price for tuition and fees over the four years increased from $59,950 to $67,250. The current acceptance rate is about 5 percent.

Yale is not the first elite university to offer this incentive. At the start of the current academic year, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began covering all costs for students from families making less than $100,000 annually, and free tuition for those from households making less than $200,000. Johns Hopkins has a similar program, with thresholds set at $300,000 and $175,000.

At Harvard, about 55 percent of families currently receive financial aid, and the average cost to attend the school during the 2023-2024 academic year was $15,700, university officials said in a March announcement.