<p>Schools claim if a student qualifies, they would accept the student even if they cannot offer him the amount he needs.
I just wonder if it is true.
Anybody got accepted without FA?</p>
<p>my son accepted to some schools without FA.</p>
<p>That is very common and happened to many people this year…it happened to my son year before last.</p>
<p>yep my son accepted without need</p>
<p>But, the question is not whether “you think you need FA”, but what the formula states.</p>
<p>However, that being said, there are the need blind schools like exeter and those that consider them both together. Their web site should tell you what type they are.</p>
<p>yes – this does happen often. Most of these schools will state that upfront – the admission process is separate from the FA process, so an admitted student may not get the FA he/she needs to attend.</p>
<p>My son applied to 9 schools, admitted to 7 – but only 3 gave him the FA he would need to attend (and that is per the school calculation of need – not my calculation).</p>
<p>If you need FA (particularly if you need significant FA) you need to look at two categories of schools: top schools (Andover, Exeter, SPS, Deerfield, I believe) and schools where your student is an excellent fit and would be a top student (either for academics, athletics, community service, etc – whatever the school values).</p>
<p>On the otherhand, there are a number of schools that consider your FA need at the same time as admissions – those schools may reject or waitlist a candidate based on their FA need. </p>
<p>You can generally tell which category a school falls in (need-blind and meets all need, need-blind for admission but limited FA, not need-blind) by carefully reading their website and calling for clarification.</p>
<p>hsmomstef, acceptances from 7 schools but adequate FA from only 3 is a harsh bit of reality, but an outcome that I think you knew could happen. Were any eastern schools your s applied to among those that offered FA?</p>
<p>inquiring mind – the FA results (and admittance results) were actually exactly what was expected – so our strategy worked exceptionally well and he will be choosing between Putney and NMH.</p>
<p>he was waitlisted at Mercersburg (I think the lack of a campus visit did him in) and SPS (which we knew wasn’t a good fit for him when we sent in the application – apparently they realized that also)</p>
<p>He applied to these schools – </p>
<p>Midland – west coast, very small school with a VERY small endowment but he was an excellent match. School tried hard to get him to come (lots of phone calls, emails, etc) but in the end they just didn’t have the endowment to give us the FA we needed. I expected that. If this were his only choice, we could have swung the cost – they gapped us ~$2000.</p>
<p>Fountain Valley School – local school (although he wanted to board). They felt he was an excellent match (which he was) but he didn’t bring anything to the table that they couldn’t get elsewhere – they have tons of 9th grade Colorado white boys who are strong candidates without any special talent. They gapped him $5,000.</p>
<p>Colorado Rocky Mountain School – great little school and he would have been a very strong student, but the endowment is miniscule and generally used to help attract students that just need a little help to pay. He got the highest financial award they gave out this year and a scholarship, but they still gapped up $8,000.</p>
<p>Conserve – a great option, especially for those that need FA. Very generous FA and a real gem of a small school. 95% of the kids are on FA. They met our need completely.</p>
<p>Proctor – admitted with no FA. Proctor also has a very small endowment which they use to help those who only need a little help. I would not have had my son apply, but he loved Proctor – so he was willing to see what happened.</p>
<p>Putney – my son is an excellent fit for Putney and it was a favorite from the beginning. They more than met our need and were extremely generous. I think that the key was that he was not only very, very strong in the areas they are looking for (community service, involvement, leadership and academics) but he brings some geographical diversity. I was honestly a bit surprised by the FA – Putney also has a small endowment.</p>
<p>NMH – also a great fit for my son and another favorite from the beginning (we kept telling him to not have a first choice school). They also were very generous and more than met our need. The key here was the same as for Putney (strong student and geographic diversity) – I also think that the athletic potential might have played a part. he interviewed with the basketball coach and they talked sports – at 6’0"/190# the coaches started calling him right after acceptance.</p>
<p>I am hoping that my successful experience will allow me to help some more families next year – we are absolutely thrilled with how this all worked out for our family. The schools just couldn’t be a better fit and the cost is more than affordable – and he wouldn’t have chosen SPS/Andover/Exeter/Choate over his current choices of Putney and NMH even if he had applied and been accepted with full FA.</p>
<p>Hsmomstef, this is a wonderful post.</p>
<p>hsmomstef - I am so glad that you have shared your experience. It will hopefully show others to look beyond the “top 10”. </p>
<p>Good Luck with your selection.</p>
<p>At [Boarding</a> School Review - College-Prep & Jr. Boarding Schools](<a href=“http://www.boardingschoolreview.com%5DBoarding”>http://www.boardingschoolreview.com), they has info about each school edowment size and percent of student</p>
<p>I was very “scientific” about researching the possibilities of FA. I made a chart which included the endowment size, number of students, endowment per student, % on FA, typical grant, cost of tuition/room & board. </p>
<p>We factored that information into consideration – but we DID NOT select schools based on that info (or my son would have only applied to the top ten richest schools). We selected schools based on fit (we had an original list of 20+ schools) and narrowed it down from there.</p>
<p>Some schools were crossed off the list because of the FA (Tabor was one), some were crossed off the list because they required an in-person interview and we couldn’t afford that (St. Andrew’s, DE), and some were crossed off the list because of the other factor’s that compromised fit (religious, dress-code, small campus, etc).</p>
<p>The point was to gather as much info as possible about the school and how well it would fit my son – and for us, FA info was critical but it didn’t drive the list.</p>
<p>His goal was to apply to 10 schools (a lot, I know – but remember we were looking for basically a full ride).</p>
<p>After acceptances and FA offers were in, I went back to my original FA matrix. Some of the results were not surprising – I knew that Proctor and CRMS would not be able to afford him and that Conserve would be generous and Midland would do their best, but it would still cost.</p>
<p>The real surprise came from Putney – they have a small endowment. This is where fit really plays a significant role.</p>
<p>So – the lesson is to use the info that is out there to determine your list, but fit is more important than any other single factor! If you are not a good fit for a school, you aren’t going to get the FA you need (if your need is significant) no matter how rich the school is.</p>
<p>This also applies to academic fit – if you need significant FA, your stats/GPA/rigor of classes,etc better be at the top of the pile – not just adequate – in comparison to the rest of the kids at the school. It is the harsh reality that you might not want to face, but it is the truth. My son’s GPA is 3.8 in a rigorous IB middle school program, but SSAT’s were 65%overall. Although Andover and Exeter were not a good fit for him in many other ways, even if they had been I would have steered him clear of applying there. He likes to be a top student – the one that does well, and I couldn’t see him doing that at Exeter or Andover without compromising somewhere else (social time, sleep time, athletics, etc). Again – this is my son I am talking about, you need to consider each student separately.</p>
<p>Boarding School Review (and some of the school web sites) has “average” FA award as well. Interestingly, depending on the school, even some with more “modest” endowments (under $50 million) can have averages close to the “big boys” (hundreds of millions) - so you can’t simply go by the endowment size.<br>
One thing to keep in mind is that those are averages - there will clearly be some awards much higher and some much lower than that number.</p>
<p>Linda – what we found with the average endowment size is that it was a little easier to tell if the school used the endowment to help out kids who only needed a little bit of aid to attend, or if they also provided substantial aid. There were a few schools where 35%+ of the kids are on FA, but the average grant was less than $20,000.</p>
<p>I will say that we called each school my son was sincerely interested in and talked to them quite frankly about the FA. Several schools said that they NEVER provided enough aid for a full need kid to attend. Several said it would all depend on the kid. We called early enough in the admission season that it wasn’t too much of a bother – and we found that the admission office was very informative. the brutal fact is that FA is limited at all schools (some more than others) and that schools use that money in different ways – to bring in 8 kids that need $5000 in aid to attend rather than 1 kid who needs $40000 to attend, to recruit athletes or high SSAT score kids, to help out an alumni or teacher’s kid, to bring in diversity, etc.</p>
<p>Good point Stef. I had found it interesting when someone last week asked to compare Hotchkiss, Salisbury and Avon. I was surprised to see they all 3 had “average” FA awards in the same range ($25,000-$27,000) yet the Hotchkiss endowment is about 10x what Avon’s is.<br>
What I didn’t look at is how MANY student’s Hotchkiss gives FA to. The endowment size would suggest it would be much greater.</p>
<p>The calculations provided some very interesting information. There are a handful of schools out there (I forget which ones) with significant endowments – yet very, very few kids on FA (less than 20%). However – the average awards are large (think $30,000+). that told me that the school is mainly full pay – with perhaps a handful of students that were offered big money to bring in something that the school wanted and wasn’t getting from the full-pay kids: athletic talent, high test scores, potential ivy league admits, etc.</p>
<p>This thread is full of interesting posts which I wish I had read last year. I really had no idea what to expect.</p>
<p>My D applied to 3 schools and was offered 80%, 70% and 60% of tuition. To make her decision easier, we sent a letter to the 60% school telling them we couldn’t swing it and they replied by upping it to 80%. (our EFC as calculated by SSS was about 20%) That really surprised me. </p>
<p>I am impressed you could do 9 applications! My D was fed up by #3, although she also applied to 3 local schools which required tests, portfolios, and performance assessments. We were busy enough with all that.</p>