<p>We are a middle class family--"middle" middle class (28% federal bracket) in a large suburb in East Coast--and getting ready to go without need-based financial aid application. Part of the motivation is that EFC was about $48K, or about $5K short of tuition and fees at most schools. </p>
<p>While I couldn't find that kind of money in our bank accounts, assets, equity in our primary home (wish I had a beach house...), nor under the mattress or couch, and therefore, couldn't disagree more with PFS, they must know something about my family finance that I don't know yet! After all, they are the financial experts, and I'm just... well, a regular Homer Simpson in a burb.</p>
<p>At first, I thought this was crazy. But what other options would I have? Taking a chance on $5K by putting DC in a much more competitive application pool? I didn't think so... even for $10K. Hence the reason for forsaking FA. </p>
<p>I know there have been a few crazies in the past. ;) Are there more such crazies out there this season?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if a gross income of around $220K results in a 48K EFC, but I wouldn’t be surprised either if a BS asks you to pay a lot less than that. My rule of thumb is when in doubt apply to FA anyway. Is securing a BS admission so vital to you that you can’t afford any disadvantage caused by applying to FA?</p>
<p>I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the premise of the OP’s plan…</p>
<p>I completely understand removing the FA factor from your child’s odds, if you have the means to do so.</p>
<p>But you say you disagree with the EFC, and that you don’t have that level of funding available, but you are able to completely forego FA and then have to come up with even more $ than the EFC you say you can’t meet? How is this going to happen?</p>
<p>Really, the OP has me scratching my head. You say you can’t “find that kind of money” anywhere, but in order to place your child in a less competitive pool, you are not applying for financial aid. So in the event your child is accepted, how will you pay the tuition???</p>
<p>So, I’m realizing that you said 28 percent, not 25 percent, which is the FA level I’m familiar with. I ran the numbers on Exeter’s FA calculator for a family of 3 (not sure if that’s accurate or not of course) in that tax bracket and there are very, very few families receiving aid. And that’s Exeter, which is very generous with middle class aid. </p>
<p>I can completely see how the tuition would seem extreme. But I’m imagining that an FA office would point to families that are living on, say, $100,000/year who manage to pay $10,000 to send a child to boarding school. From that perspective, a family that makes $140,000 or more should be able to pay full tuition.</p>
<p>I also find this conversation a bit depressing–because if the 28 percent tax bracket is middle middle class, where does that put us 25 perenters?</p>
<p>Do all FA amounts present an equal challenge to being admitted? I really don’t know. But the arithmetic would argue that a school could admit 5 attractive candidates needing only 10k, than 1 attractive candidate needing 50k.</p>
<p>I meant 25, not 28. I was too excited and misread the tax table. I apologize. I suspect that the high EFC was probably due to having no other child requiring tuition payment. How would I pay for this? I don’t know yet. Perhaps SSS knows better and wants me to do some draconian makeover in my family finance. If I do butcher my finance, retirement and/or home, then financing 53k does not seem to that different from financing 48k.</p>
<p>I think it is fair to say that you are in the best position to evaluate your family’s ability to pay the EFC. If I were in your position I would apply for the financial aid.</p>
<p>I too stand corrected about a statement I made earlier. 48K is actually the full cost of schools like Andover and Exeter, and is only a few thousand less than the full cost of some other schools. It should be a “surprise” if a school is asking a family with household income > 200K to pay a lot less than their EFC, which means it can still happen but certainly not often. That said, as another poster pointed out, you’d be categorized as a “low need” family if you apply for FA, and I’d agree the disadvantage due to your FA application should be relatively less. </p>
<p>Unless PFS has modified their EFC calculation model significantly, I seriously doubt the accuracy of this number. For a gross income of less than 150K w/o other significant assests, the EFC is 48K? That sounds crazy.</p>
<p>Okay…now I’m back to my original post! I agree with Benley. There’s something wrong with your Parent Financial Contribution (it’s not just that you only have one tuition-paying student)–unless there’s something going on financially that we’re not aware of. </p>
<p>If that’s the case, and your EFC is accurate, then, frankly, I would not send my kid to boarding school in our tax bracket without financial aid. Cutting out “luxury” items like expensive vacations, new cars, mall shopping, big mortgages to afford prep school is one thing, but in that tax bracket, full tuition would mean either big loans or cutting out basic living expenses, retirement, etc. Possible, maybe (I’ve read the Tightwad Gazette!), but is boarding school really worth that kind of sacrifice? I don’t think so; there are other more affordable school options out there–PSEO, homeschooling, day schools, etc. Boarding school is great, but it’s not THAT great.</p>
<p>One thing I wonder–as a person who grew up in an affluent suburban town in New England and then moved to a working class town in the Midwest–is how much home mortgages affect our PFC. Our housing is very affordable, but we live in a teeny tiny home by suburban standards. I wonder if schools consider the cost of living in an expensive town in New England a luxury? As a parent, I wouldn’t necessarily think of it that way, but having lived both ways I can see how location might be an acceptable sacrifice from an FA perspective. On the other hand, uprooting a family to afford secondary school would probably not be worth the cost, were I in that situation.</p>
<p>SharingGift: We found ourselves in [post=13971821]exactly your situation[/post] three years ago, though we did apply for FA. There was no mistake on the forms we submitted. Our error was having no debt beyond a small mortgage. I still feel weve been heavily penalized for being financially responsible all our lives, but it is what it is. We were fortunate that rather than an outright rejection, two schools contacted us to say that they would like to offer admission to our son but could not offer FA and wanted to know if we wanted them to a) send the admission without FA or b) send a rejection or c) make it work someway. When we asked them how in the heck they thought we had that kind of money, they spelled it out for us. It was not pretty, and our already frill-less life has become even more simple, but cat food can taste great if prepared creatively. OK, Im (almost) kidding there, but I do envy the rice or beans people. Best of luck to you; it’s a very tough decision to make.</p>
<p>@ChoatieMom we are afraid of just this kind of situation and perhaps that is why I have yet to submit our information to SSS. We have zero debt besides our reasonable mortgage (275k) and some student loans of mine (60k). Consequently we are able to invest and save about half of our monthly take home income…putting it into IRA’s, 401k’s and the like. Perhaps I should submit our information to SSS to see where we are because in all honesty, if our EFC is <15k we might as well kiss our kid’s BS dreams goodbye.</p>
<p>Truly not meaning to be judgmental here–but a $275k mortgage would be something only the very wealthiest people living in the very nicest houses would assume where I live. I think it’s genuinely hard for people who have lived in certain parts of the U.S. to see this, but there are still places to live where a livable house can be purchased for $100,000 or less. Just looking at the big picture–schools are taking kids from all parts of the country and the world, and have, perhaps, a broader perspective on what’s reasonable. </p>
<p>When it comes to college financial aid, schools take into account the money we are currently putting away for retirement, but not money already in retirement accounts. If the thing that’s getting you into that 25 percent tax bracket is the money you’re putting away into retirement, then (a) good for you! and (b) I think it’s reasonable for schools to consider our income before sheltered retirement investments as our real income. </p>
<p>Or–ChoatieMom you could answer this best–in secondary school, does the school consider already accumulated retirement savings? That’s not what I’ve thought–we’ve also done a decent job of saving for retirement (we’re not going to be buying a second house in Europe with all our savings, but we won’t be depending our boarding school educated child to pay our electricity bill), and I haven’t had the sense that that has been held against us.</p>
<p>Yes, when I saw the contribution they expected from me, I almost fell over. However, you are correct. One is expected to purge one’s life of all but the most basic in order to send your child to boarding school. My solution was to work 70+ hours a week. Fortunately, I have that option.</p>
<p>We are also in a similar boat. We have 1 child and are in the 25% bracket. We had an EFC of 45K. We applied for aid, but did not get any. And indeed, DS may have gotten into a few more schools (including 1st choice, where he was not accepted) if we hadn’t applied, but who knows? I definitely wouldn’t have bothered with the PFS if I had known we wouldn’t qualify. On the other hand, I think we would have just nipped the whole BS idea in the bud early on if we’d thought we would be paying full sticker price, so maybe it is good that initially we had hope? I even thought we might perhaps get a bit more than was indicated by the PFS because that had been the case of a few of the families on CC. Also, when you look at the estimators on some of the larger schools’ websites, they show families making far more than us that are receiving 25-35K in aid (how?!?). So, we only applied to schools that gave great aid and had huge endowments. One school called to tell us that according to their formula we’d be getting zip but DS would be accepted. Others didn’t even call, just sent the “fat” acceptance packet with not even an acknowledgement of our aid application. </p>
<p>Good luck SharingGift - it is hard to know what to do. An extra 5K sure would be nice to have right about now!</p>