How should I compare financial aid offers from Brown and Williams?

Start with each school’s four-year net price, not the headline cost of attendance or the size of the grant alone. Subtract only grants and scholarships that do not need to be repaid from Brown’s and Williams’s billed charges, then separately account for loans, work-study expectations, health insurance, travel, books, and personal expenses.

Brown may make more financial sense for a student whose family values access to Providence, internships, research, and an urban setting, but those opportunities can also create optional spending: local transportation, meals off campus, and more frequent travel. Check whether your Brown offer includes a federal loan or a campus-work expectation, whether housing and dining assumptions match the plan you would actually choose, and whether you will need to buy the university health plan or can waive it with family coverage.

Williams may fit a student comfortable with a residential, rural campus, where daily spending can be more contained but getting to and from campus can cost more. Look closely at transportation estimates, especially for breaks, and ask how the package treats course materials and any expected student contribution from summer earnings or campus employment. A work-study award is an opportunity to earn wages, not a credit automatically applied to your bill, so do not count it as equivalent to grant aid.

For either offer, compare the first-year amount with the school’s stated policy on annual reassessment. Aid can change when family income, assets, household size, or another sibling’s enrollment changes. If one package contains loans, an unusually high work expectation, or an expense your family cannot cover up front, request a review with documentation of the specific circumstance. The meaningful difference is the amount your family must pay or borrow over four years, including realistic travel and personal costs, rather than which letter shows the larger grant.