PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To many prospective students and families, Brown University’s commitment to making a Brown education accessible to students from all income backgrounds is clear. The University does not consider an undergraduate applicant’s ability to pay tuition in admission decisions, meets the full demonstrated financial need of every admitted student and last month eliminated loans from all University-packaged undergraduate aid awards.

What is less clear to families is precisely how Brown’s overall commitment to affordability will impact them specifically, based on their unique financial circumstances. To assist prospective families in understanding their estimated cost of attendance, Brown debuted a new cost estimator on Wednesday, Jan. 17, as a quick and easy tool that can provide a personalized estimate based on answers to six simple questions.

The new online tool, called MyinTuition, asks users to provide basic financial information on family income, home value, mortgage balance, cash assets, and savings held in retirement accounts and other investments. Based on those details, families receive individualized estimates of the cost of attending Brown, including scholarship assistance, work-study opportunities and out-of-pocket costs.

The tool is easy to use and more straightforward than Brown’s more detailed net price calculator, says Dean of Financial Aid James Tilton. “MyinTuition allows families to answer just a handful of questions and get an immediate idea of what it might cost to attend Brown,” Tilton said.

Tilton says he expects the MyinTuition calculator, given how easy it is to use, to dispel the idea among some prospective students and families that a Brown education is out of reach financially — which is critical in ensuring that high-achieving students from all income backgrounds know that Brown can be an option.

“MyinTuition will provide any family, regardless of their financial circumstances, an estimated financial aid award and a range of what a they might expect to pay per year to attend Brown,” he said. “Families interested in a more precise estimate can complete Brown's Net Price Calculator, which requires more detailed tax, asset and business information.”

MyinTuition was created in 2013 by Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College and now founder and CEO of MyinTuition Corp. Between April 2017 and January 2018 alone, more than 150,000 people used the tool to generate college estimates. The tool requires no tax forms and takes the average user just three minutes to complete.

Brown joined 15 other universities who launched MyinTuition on Jan. 17: Babson College, Boston College, Colby College, Davidson College, Duke University, Grinnell College, Hamilton College, Johns Hopkins University, Middlebury College, Northwestern University, Skidmore College, Smith College, St. Olaf College, University of Rochester and Yale University.

The 16 new users joined 15 existing MyinTuition partner schools: Amherst College, Bowdoin College, Carleton College, Colorado College, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Mount Holyoke College, Pomona College, Rice University, University of Virginia, Vassar College, Washington and Lee University, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University and Williams College.

Prospective Brown students and families can access MyinTuition here.