It's complicated. The kids whose parents pay for full tuition (or for a new building) subsidize the cost of attendance for the rest of us. I definitely couldn't have afforded to go without my financial aid package.

And that's supposedly part of the value proposition of elite schools - mix wealthy and connected students with bright students with ideas.

There's plenty of international students on financial aid too, I think it's doing them a disservice to say they're only being admitted for the revenue. Maybe at larger public institutions with tens of thousands of students, but I don't think that's generally the case at the smaller elite schools we're talking about