Brandeis launches AI aid tool to estimate college costs for students

Brandeis University has quietly put a new cost estimator, called Faye, on its affordability pages, giving prospective students a personalized projected net price before they decide where to apply. The pilot tool asks about academic background and family finances, including tax-return information, and Brandeis says it can fold in potential grants and merit scholarships for U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

That makes Faye more than a sticker-price display. It is Brandeis’ attempt to move the aid conversation earlier in the admissions shopping process, when families are still weighing whether a school with a $73,080 undergraduate tuition bill, plus a $598 student activity fee and housing and food charges, belongs on the list at all. First-year students live in double rooms, which Brandeis lists at $11,560 in its housing breakdown for 2026-27.

Brandeis still keeps a separate Net Price Calculator, the more traditional tool colleges have used for years to estimate what students like them paid after grants and scholarship aid. Faye is Brandeis’ more conversational front end, but the university is clear that it remains in a pilot or beta phase and that the estimate is not a binding aid award. That distinction matters. A smoother interface can reduce friction, but it does not change the basic reality that families are still being asked to trust a projection before an actual aid package arrives.

The university is also leaning hard into a broader affordability campaign, the Brandeis Commitment, for students entering in fall 2025 and beyond. Under that program, families earning under $75,000 with typical assets receive grants and scholarships covering full tuition. Families earning up to $200,000 with typical assets receive aid covering half tuition. Brandeis says the commitment includes a four-year guarantee of scholarship support, as long as family circumstances do not change materially and the number of children in undergraduate college does not shift in a major way.

The school is pairing that promise with evidence that aid already reaches most of the incoming class. Brandeis says 82% of the Class of 2029 received a merit and/or need-based scholarship. For college shoppers, Faye is meant to translate that policy into a single estimate, one that tries to answer the question sticker prices rarely do: what will Brandeis actually cost me? Whether the tool delivers real upfront clarity or just a more polished version of the same opaque aid process will be the test that matters.