<p>I just don’t see the divide that they describe in this article at my child’s BS. In fact, it is almost the total opposite. The social groups seem very integrated, and more often than not, on school holidays parents will host 2 or 3 in the group who may not be able to afford a vacation on their own. Our home is always open to my child’s friends and they are an extremely diverse group. We hosted a large group of them over a long weekend when my child came home, and my observation was that they were all pretty comfortable with each other.</p>
<p>Yes, I also sense that extreme divide is amplified at day schools where the kids all go home to their respective zipcodes at night. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that extreme divide doesn’t rankle at boarding schools. It is an issue that Shamus Khan touched on in his book “Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School”. As in Khan’s book, DS has reported that some of the outreach students (not all) at his school have feelings of alienation and make public declarations of their bitterness right before graduation. While there was a wide range of family incomes at DS’s previous international school in GMT+7, there were no truly poor kids.</p>
<p>DS also gets invited to stay with friends during breaks at their homes. It makes me gasp where some of these houses are.</p>
<p>Agree. On the physical level, everything is integrated, and more affluent families are generous in including the less affluent kids. Under the surface…when you know you can’t return that hospitality in the way it was given to you; when you make the decision for the hundredth time not to even mention your dormmate’s slick new computer or smartphone or designer clothes to your parents because you know what they’re giving up just to keep you at school, I think it can, over time, rankle and surface at times as bitterness. Nothing new in that, or much that can be done–and I certainly don’t mean to make other parents, whose generosity and kindness often seems boundless, feel defensive. Many of those parents were the scholarship kids of their generation. Nonetheless, the divide does exist, though perhaps felt mostly by the have nots.</p>
<p>Today I was reading 5/30/13 on-line Phillipian “state of the school 2013” article which had a question to students this year, “Is there a socio-economic divide at this school” and the answer was a resounding yes by most students. Sub-divided by race and ethnicity, it did not appear to make any difference in the large majority of students from all groups who saw a clear divide. So while diversity and financial aid are playing a big role in today’s prep schools, something is still palpable to the kids.</p>
<p>Here is the link to the report 2prepMom mentions, along with a rather telling quote:</p>
<p>“Survey results indicate that most students think there is a social divide between students of different races and ethnicities, with 65.8 percent of the all respondents indicating so. This is also contested along racial lines. The majority of Caucasian (67.5 percent) and Asian-American and Asian (64.5 percent) students believed that Andover successfully connects racially and socioeconomically diverse students with each other. African-American and African respondents overwhelmingly disagreed with this, with only 27.6 percent saying that Andover successfully connects students of all backgrounds.”</p>
<p>[State</a> of the Academy 2013](<a href=“http://www.phillipian.net/sota13/sections/welcome.html]State”>http://www.phillipian.net/sota13/sections/welcome.html)</p>
<p>I was not able to find out about their methodology other than that the survey was done through surveymonkey. They had 685 responses; Andover’s enrollment is 1143. Andover is one of the more diverse BS, with 46% of students receiving FA (13% of student body receiving full ride), more women than men on faculty, 8.7% of faculty is Black and 5.5% is Hispanic/Latino. 16% of the most recent admits identify as “Native American, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino or Biracial.”</p>
<p>Lets be honest. It is very hard for parents too, esp. But we have to realize that these kids families will end up being the donors that help keep the school well maintained etc. But it can be hard in the little ways…such as, “What are your plans for the summer?” question or worrying about paying for parent weekend air fare, and dinner. “Can we afford to take out their friends too?”…It can be the little items that are often the biggest stressors…</p>
<p>Nevermind the cost of buying new clothes every summer too!</p>
<p>We have been very luck to stumble across our D’s BS(our first BS experience). All the kids use the same computer and always wear a uniform. When sports or academic teams stop to eat at a restaurant, the kids get a generous food allowance. Also, almost all the extra activities are provided by generous alum. Even many of the spring break and summer opportunities have generous scholarship options. </p>
<p>I don’t know if I am just not seeing it, but my D hangs out with kids that have similiar interests like music, athletics, and academics, not equal paychecks. Also, I have found that a care package of chocolate is a good as gold!</p>
<p>The mantra we teach our kids is “money cannot buy character, character is what you make of yourself”. We have friends across the financial spectrum as do our kids. I think keeping them focused on what is really important in life makes these kinds of “privilege” distinctions rather superfluous.</p>
<p>As we’ve started the search/apply process for SevenDaughter2 (got to come up with a better handle for her!), one “stat” that I’ve looked at more closely is “percent of student body on FA”.</p>
<p>Admittedly we are very spoiled in this regard by having our first child at SAS…which has an FA rate in the mid to high 40% range. Of the schools mentioned here with any frequency, I think this is only eclipsed by Emma Willard (a single sex school).</p>
<p>Why does this matter to me? I think the number speaks to divide between the kids who can afford to order take out five days a week and those who can’t. To the kids who go skiing in Gstaad for a week vs. those who go to the Poconos for a day (the infamous Jackson Hole FA candidate notwithstanding).</p>
<p>The more kids on FA, means at least to me, the less worry about the socio-economic divide.</p>
<p>SevenDad
Both Exeter and Andover have a high percentage of FA. In particular, Exeter offers a free education to families with income under 75K, with sliding scale aid up to 200K. There is a cost calculator on the FA Exeter page. The majority of kids receive FA (I think it was 55% last year).</p>
<p>@2prepMom: I would have guessed as much, as “The Big 2” have some of the largest total endowments of all the BSs. And Andover now is the only school of the “usual suspects” that has “need blind” verbiage in it’s materials…at least that I know.</p>
<p>SPS has the “free under $XXk HHI” thing as well, I think. Groton, too.</p>
<p>But I’d also assume that all of these schools are harder to get into than either SAS or Emma Willard, no?</p>
<p>Actual FA percentage at Exeter for incoming 2017 class is 41% (took me a while to find the right Exonian reference).</p>
<p>Frankly, they are all so damn hard to get in to I am not sure there is any meaningful difference between 12%, 20% or 24%. Basic recommendation - you never know, might as well try! But caste a wide net, especially if looking for FA.</p>
<p>SevenDad, you do realize, don’t you, that lots of kids who are full pay can’t afford or don’t have the lifestyle of skiing in Gstaad, right? What you’d really want to know – but of course these stats don’t exist – is how many uber wealthy kids there are at any given school. It’s not like every school is Rockefellers vs. kids on financial aid. There’s probably very litle difference socioeconomically between a kid who’s getting some FA and a kid just on the other side of that FA divide. For lots of full pay families, sending a kid or two to boarding school is every bit as much a financial hardship as it is for families receiving some FA. I know you were probably speaking tongue in cheek to some extent, but I do think that some people on here think that all full pay families must be uber wealth and snobby to go along with it.</p>
<p>I agree, soxmom. I think sometimes people think of full-pay / FA as haves / have nots. And it’s way more complex than that. As we know, there are many, many families who are full pay and have to make lots of sacrifices to send their kid(s) to prep school. And then there are some families who have the resources to write the $50K tuition check without batting an eye.</p>
<p>To add on to what Soxmom said, we met quite a few “full pay” kids who were from normal middle class families- their grandparents or some other relative (“Great Aunt Tilly”) were paying the bill for the great education that prep school offers. There was no summer house in the Hamptons or skiing in Aspen for those families.</p>