The Debt-Free College Degree

When she was six, Elaine Klaiklung emigrated from Thailand to the U.S. with her mother, a single parent who earns $20,000 a year working in a Charlotte grocery store. By graduating in the top 3 percent of her high school class, she met or surpassed the admission requirements for scores of U.S. universities, but she wished to remain in North Carolina. “I wanted to stay close to my mom,” she says. “My whole life, I’ve only had her and she’s only had me.” Klaiklung applied to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Davidson College and got into both. Chapel Hill is often ranked as the best value in public education. In-state tuition for her freshman year, 2009-10, would be just $5,600 compared with $35,000 at Davidson. But Davidson made Eileen an offer she couldn’t refuse.

“When I got my acceptance letter and my tuition bill, it told us that everything was mostly paid for,” she recalls. “I had heard something about Davidson’s no-loan policy, but it didn’t make sense because it sounded too good to be true. My mom was like, ‘This can’t be right. We need to go talk to them.’ ” The admission counselor explained that, because of the Davidson Trust, the school was able to cover 100 percent of demonstrated need without loans. Her mother cried. “At the time, I felt kind of embarrassed. When we walked back to my car, she said, ‘I’m so happy. I feel like I should make [the counselor] something.’ ”