September 9, 2025
Dear Tufts community members,
I’m pleased to announce that beginning with the fall 2026 entering class, U.S. undergraduate students whose annual family income is under $150,000 with typical assets will attend Tufts tuition-free.
This new program, the Tufts Tuition Pact, underscores our commitment to ensuring that a world-class education is within reach for talented students from all socioeconomic backgrounds.
The Tufts Tuition Pact builds on existing programs that increase access to a Tufts education and ensure that, in many cases, the actual cost of attendance is significantly lower than the university’s posted cost of attendance:
- Students whose family income is less than $60,000 a year typically receive financial aid packages with no loans at all.
- We are provisional members of the American Talent Initiative and have committed to increasing our percentage of Pell-eligible students. Over the past two years, we have already grown our enrollment percentage from 11 to 16 percent.
- We are one of the few universities that meets 100 percent of the demonstrated need of every admitted student.
The Tufts Tuition Pact continues our longstanding efforts to minimize the need for undergraduate student loans by increasing financial aid scholarships and grants. As a result of the more than $143 million of undergraduate financial aid that the university provides annually, the average amount of student debt post-graduation from Tufts is under $15,000, significantly less than the nationwide average of nearly $40,000. This helps set our graduates up for long-term success.
The Tufts Tuition Pact has been made possible by the generosity of generations of donors who have made gifts to help meet student financial need. I am grateful for our community’s ongoing support, which helps make our financial aid program sustainable and will allow us to provide more aid in the future.
I encourage you to read more about the Tufts Tuition Pact on Tufts Now.
Best Regards,
Sunil Kumar
President