This discussion was created from comments split from: Applying for 10th Grade to Independent High School : Financial Aid?.
I’m still struggling with a big unknown. If anyone has insights, please chime in…
Does going to boarding school help/hurt/neither chances of getting merit scholarships and FA for college? (assuming not low income but the squeezed middle/upper middle class).
The simple act of attending BS will not affect FA/merit for the student.
In fact, just attending BS doesn’t mean you get an admit to a coveted college.
You need to look at what college FA is about, what it’s based on, depending the college. Plus what it really takes to get in, besides stats or the hs rep. After that, perhaps your own thread.
So, the same student could get similar aid, whether attending LPS or a BS, then?
Thanks.
Correct
Having 2 kids in college, I will say that attending boarding school can actually negatively impact merit packages from colleges. Many offer packages based on GPA. Most top prep schools pride themselves on how hard it is to maintain a high GPA. Our kids prep school also didn’t offer any ability to earn a higher GPA for honors or Ap courses. Maxed out at 4.0. Which further affected merit packages.
What @vegas1 said. However, SPS just got a 7 pt. grading system approved for college admissions, including an official 7-pt. GPA on the transcript and a conversion of this GPA to a traditional scale for use by colleges. I wonder if other BS will follow suit.
@GoatMama does this change mean that SPS students will now be able to achieve a converted average that is higher than a 4.0?
@vegas1 back in my day the colleges my friends and I applied to would look at unweighted GPA’s for admissions and aid; the only reason my fellow students and I cared about the weighted GPA was class rank. My school, an LPS, only weighted AP classes, not honors. At one day school where my DC could have attended there is no weighting for any classes like at BS, and at the other local school there would have been weighting for all honors and AP. We had in fact already paid a deposit at that school and DC had registered for classes due to their early deadline prior to M10, and the schedule was all honors and AP–I’m guessing that the kid would’ve been close to a weighted 5.0 from year one. Knowing what I know about the academics at that school and at PA where my kid now attends, that 5.0 is likely much easier to achieve than a 5.0 on Andover’s 6 point scale. I thought that colleges take into consideration the disparity in grading scales for both admissions and aid, in other words effectively converting each applicant’s GPA, depending on the school they are coming from, to achieve a more or less apples to apples comparison. Are you saying this is not the case for either admissions or aid?
@Apple, yes, for the first time in the history of the school, students will be able to achieve a GPA higher than 4.0, beginning this year. It also seems that 4.0 will be somewhat more achievable than before. The old system was hurting students during admissions, we were told. All of this was explained to us during Family Weekend. In addition, the school profile sent to colleges states that admission to SPS is highly selective (13% in 2016) and students would likely rank in the top 10% of their class at home.
In our experience many colleges have very strict guidelines for merit aid. If your GPA is x or above= $25k merit, if it is y or above= $15k merit aid. These formulas are designed for “fairness”. Of course they layer in ACT and SAT stats as well. Merit money exists at many schools to entice the highest performing students to attend a college to increase the college accepted and enrolled student profiles. Our son received substantially less merit aid based solely on his GPA (which by PEA standard was pretty darn respectable). He knows tons of kids who attended LPS and they received 50% higher merit packages based on higher GPA. (Rigor, grade inflation and weighting)
A profile a school sends has zero implications on this formula in our experience. I think the school profile has some pull with Ivy type colleges that fully understand the rigor at BS. Most Ivies never offer merit aid- so it becomes a non issue there.
that’s depressing @vegas1 , but thank you for your explanation. is it different for admissions? [-O<
Change “most” to “all.” 
But, aren’t the Ivies also need blind with the ability to provide FA on the basis of demonstrated need? As well as several other colleges?
https://www.edvisors.com/plan-for-college/college-admissions/need-blind-admissions/
ugh 
@vegas1 and @GoatMama I find this whole GPA thing so crazy. PEA has the 11 point scale now SPS is moving to a 7. Why don’t they all just go to a 5 and classify most/all of their classes as accelerated … Or something like that. We find the whole FA thing verses merit very frustrating. We qualify for nothing for FA. And we aren’t rich. Moving to PEA probably kills off a lot of merit aid opportunities. Look the quality of the education is worth it I think but still. I wish these schools would get their heads out of the sand and think more broadly. It’s not just rich and needy.
And…how do hooks even factor into this discussion?
In our experience, less than you would imagine. For merit aid- zero. For admissions, a true hook is relatively non existent anymore.
I don’t know what the solution is, Center. We made the BS decision because of the unparalleled opportunity for growth, not just academically but socially, emotionally, and in so many other ways I fail to articulate. We are fully aware that her GPA will be lower than what it would have been had she stayed home, and that it may affect college admissions and aid. We will deal with it later. For now, we are certain beyond doubt that we made the decision that was best for her as a person. She would not have developed in the same way had she stayed home. That’s hard to quantify, but I believe that ultimately it’s the only measure that truly matters.