It isn't my opinion that the financial aid estimators at these schools give the results they give. You can go to the schools’ sites and check them for yourselves. If you don't, you're trafficking in unsubstantiated rubbish.
The bottom line is, if you can qualify academically for these schools, if they will admit you, then they will go a far way to make sure that your family can afford to send you there, and thus, most folks don't pay the sticker price.
As for the folks who go to these schools, you can check the SAT scores for yourself, the average GPAs, etc. These schools attract the very top students, and few of them are rich enough to pay a “Harvard Number.”
Have you ever met anyone who has a degree from an Ivy League school? I have. My alma mater (where my sons currently attend high school) regularly turns out a few each year. These kids are usually from upper middle class families, but not rich kids. Not families that can afford $50K per year and more. They're kids who are getting large grants of financial aid. Again, go check it out for yourself. Go to the schools’ websites, find the financial aid calculators, and put in sets of numbers.
That's not my “uninformed opinion,” that's the representation the schools make for themselves.
If you wish to say that they're liars, well, then you may so assert.
But that would be just that, an assertion. Of your own uninformed opinion.
sitetest
Dear sitetest,
Sorry, but you’ve still not given me any good reason to credit you with anything.
Cheers.