What does Lafayette College cost after financial aid?
A family earning under $30,000 paid $12,716 a year on average at Lafayette College after grant aid, not the published tuition. A family earning over $110,000 paid $52,608. Across all aided students the average was $34,433. Published tuition and fees are $65,398, which is the figure almost nobody pays in full.
Every figure on this page is computed from the US Dept of Education College Scorecard, Most Recent Institution-Level Data, pulled on 2026-09-17, when the page is built. NudgeEssay has no relationship with Lafayette College, this page is not an offer of aid, and nothing here is a quote.
Updated . Written and maintained by NudgeEssay; how facts on this site are sourced and corrected is on the about page.
What Lafayette College costs by family income
Net price is the whole cost of attendance minus every grant and scholarship, so it is what a family was left to find. These are averages over students who received federal aid at Lafayette College, split by total household income, exactly as the college reported them.
| Household income | Net price a year |
|---|---|
| $0 to $30,000 | $12,716 |
| $30,001 to $48,000 | $7,445 |
| $48,001 to $75,000 | $10,881 |
| $75,001 to $110,000 | $12,581 |
| $110,001 and above | $52,608 |
Across every income band together the average was $34,433. Of the 1,513 four-year colleges in this set that report an average net price, 122 report a higher one than Lafayette College and 1,390 report a lower one. The middle college in that set reports $19,858. That is a count, not a rating: a lower net price is not a better college and this page makes no claim that it is.
The published price, and who actually pays it
Lafayette College publishes tuition and fees of $65,398 a year, the same figure for every student regardless of state. Adding housing, food, books and supplies, the total cost of attendance is $83,133. That is the sticker price. The table above is what families were actually left to pay after grant aid, and at most colleges the two are a long way apart.
How far aid reaches
12% of undergraduates at Lafayette College received a Pell Grant, the federal grant for students with the highest financial need, and 20% took a federal student loan. Pell share is the closest the federal file comes to saying how many low income students a college enrols. It counts no institutional scholarship, which at many colleges reaches far more students than Pell does.
Students who completed a degree left with a median of $16,000 in federal loan debt, against $14,000 across everyone who borrowed, whether they finished or not. Federal loans only: private loans and parent PLUS loans are outside this figure, so what a family actually carries can be higher.
Writing the Lafayette College application
Cost is one half of the decision and the application is the other. The Lafayette College essay requirements page carries this cycle’s prompts word for word with their word limits, the deadline rounds and the date each was read on Lafayette College’s own admissions site. The Lafayette College essay review page sets out what a read does against those particular prompts.
Two lists in this set rank colleges on the same federal figures this page uses: lowest average net price and lowest net price for families under $30,000.
Method
Source: the US Dept of Education College Scorecard, Most Recent Institution-Level Data, pulled on 2026-09-17 from the bulk download. The file carries 1,944 institutions under the filter PREDDEG=3 (bachelor-predominant) AND CURROPER=1 (operating). This page reads the row the federal file records as Lafayette College, Easton, PA, IPEDS UNITID 213385, a private nonprofit institution.
Net price in the College Scorecard is the full cost of attendance, which is tuition, fees, housing, food, books and supplies together, minus every grant and scholarship the student received. It is what a family was actually left to find, from savings, earnings or loans. It is an average over students who received federal aid at that college, not a quote, and your own figure depends on your family finances and on what that college offers you.
The income bands are the federal file’s own brackets of total household income: $0 to $30,000, $30,001 to $48,000, $48,001 to $75,000, $75,001 to $110,000, and $110,001 and above. Each figure is the average net price paid by aided students in that bracket.
The federal file keeps net price in two separate columns, one for public and one for private institutions, and never fills both for the same college. Every figure above is read from whichever column the file filled for Lafayette College, which is the private one, rather than from the sector label, because the two disagree for at least one institution in the current file.
Comparisons on this page are made against 1,564 four-year colleges. 144 private for-profit institutions and 236 reporting fewer than 250 undergraduates are excluded, the same pool the rankings computed from federal data use, so the two surfaces describe the same universe. A college that reported nothing is absent rather than counted as a zero.
Nothing on this page is a quote and nothing is an offer. Only Lafayette College’s own net price calculator and its financial aid office can tell your family what it would pay. These figures are averages over a past cohort of aided students, and a college can change its aid policy between cycles.
Questions
- How much does Lafayette College cost after financial aid?
- $34,433 a year on average across students who received federal aid, from the College Scorecard file pulled on 2026-09-17. That is the average across every income band together; the table on this page splits it into five. Net price in the College Scorecard is the full cost of attendance, which is tuition, fees, housing, food, books and supplies together, minus every grant and scholarship the student received. It is what a family was actually left to find, from savings, earnings or loans. It is an average over students who received federal aid at that college, not a quote, and your own figure depends on your family finances and on what that college offers you.
- What does Lafayette College cost for a low income family?
- $12,716 a year on average, for households earning $0 to $30,000. The income bands are the federal file’s own brackets of total household income: $0 to $30,000, $30,001 to $48,000, $48,001 to $75,000, $75,001 to $110,000, and $110,001 and above. Each figure is the average net price paid by aided students in that bracket.
- What is tuition at Lafayette College?
- $65,398 in published tuition and fees for the year, the same figure for every student regardless of state. That is the sticker price before any grant or scholarship, and the full cost of attendance including housing, food and books is $83,133. It is not what most families pay: the net price table above is.
- How many students at Lafayette College get financial aid?
- 12% of undergraduates received a Pell Grant, the federal grant for students with the highest financial need, and 20% took a federal student loan. Pell share is the closest thing the federal file has to a measure of how many low income students a college enrols. It does not count institutional scholarships, which at many colleges reach far more students.
- How much debt do Lafayette College graduates leave with?
- $16,000 is the median federal loan debt of students who completed a degree at Lafayette College, against $14,000 across everyone who borrowed, whether they finished or not. Federal loans only: private loans and parent PLUS loans are not in this figure, so the real total a family carries can be higher.
- Where do these numbers come from and how current are they?
- From the US Dept of Education College Scorecard, Most Recent Institution-Level Data, pulled on 2026-09-17 from the US Department of Education's bulk download. Every figure is one the college itself reported to the federal government, and every figure on this page is computed from that file when the page is built. NudgeEssay has no relationship with Lafayette College and this page is not an offer of aid. Lafayette College's own net price calculator is the only thing that can quote your family a figure.
Cost after aid at other colleges in Pennsylvania
- Bucknell University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Dickinson College
- Drexel University
- Duquesne University
- Franklin & Marshall College
- Gettysburg College
- Haverford College
- Juniata College
- Lehigh University
- Penn State University
- Swarthmore College
Every college in this set is listed on the cost index.