I know you are feeling angry and frustrated, but you have to know that they need to consider assets in addition to income when considering FA awards. what about the hypothetical person who lives in an expensive house with no mortgage, responsible yes but that can’t really be the intent of FA…I understand the college savings are a different animal, but I can see the other side of the argument too. It feels to me like you are angry and frustrated and tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater and send your son to public school. I don’t think anyone with more remove than you are totally understandably able to have would think thats a good choice for your family. Not for nothing but if you want a NE Prep school experience for your kids and you need FA, you probably need to apply to a lot of schools and broaden the geography. This is an incredibly difficult situation for you but you are making it harder for yourself by limiting the search.
MusicMerit,
My husband & I came from public school and the very best teacher we had at our kids’ private school came from public. No hangups about public in our household.
Our kids have always gone to a small private school, though. It was (yes, past tense!) a gift from my FIL. There is no utopia: not in public or private. They just offer different experiences.
Glad your DD got into her dream school. That’s FAB. Glad you got FA. It is handled very differently at Ivies as they give zero for merit & have their own way of calculating FA (something I’m finding more common than I would have thought).
My nephew is at Cornell and loves his school, too. His parents are divorced, though, and EVEN THOUGH THE DIVORCE DECREE specifically states his dad is not responsible for any school costs, Cornell required income calculations based on his single mother + his dad + his dad’s new wife! My sister is taking it in the shorts. They got ZERO FA. I won’t be paying $65k/yr to send my kids anywhere but she thinks he will recover the investment in a Cornell education. I hope they are right because she bankrolled her retirement to make it happen. At 55 that takes a lot of faith.
Hi LifeLongNYer,
Yeah, I understand the broaden the net concept but it just won’t happen. My husband grew up without a dad and driving distance is his compromise. Period. We had many NE schools very interested in DS but they were off limits.
As far as FA, I always keep in mind FA is a gift and no family is entitled to it. However, it should be managed fairly for all families. That considered, I understand they DO count assets as well as income but I think it is wrong. You say they “need to” but they really do not.
If 2 families make the SAME amount of $$ and one blows it and the other puts it into assets/investments, why on earth should the one that blew it get extra FA?
“Savings” is accomplished through planning, compromise and often doing without. It does not magically appear in an account. It is earned through many sacrifices made over a long period of time.
The family with the same income and nothing to show of it…it did not vaporize into thin air. It was spent rather than saved.
The big house, no mortgage example is lost on me. I don’t think it makes a hill of beans.
That person did not become mortgage-free without concessions. That mortgage did not jump up and pay itself.
They worked at paying it off. Why should they get dinged?
Spending NOR saving habits should not enter the FA equation. Someone who saved should not be penalized. Nor do I believe the spender is more deserving.
Obviously, you don’t agree and I must be missing a key portion of the logic puzzle.
Please tell me which part I should consider as this formula seems broken from my vantage point.
I just don’t get how you can be so sure now that your daughter won’t get into a BS with FA two years down the road. Yes, getting in with FA is obviously harder. But the fact that your son didn’t get it doesn’t mean there’s no chance she will. If a school falls in love with her, they may make some money available. And is there really some magic to the school having to be within 2 hours driving distance? I get that your husband wants the kids nearby, but how much difference would it really make if it was a 3 hour drive instead of 2? Is he really not willing to let the kids get a better education just for the sake of a few less hours in the car?
But what about Foxcroft, Madeira, or Garrison Forrest?
My point was actually not about public schools, although that worked in D’s case.
My point was that D is at her dream college, but her brother 6 years younger will not be at his dream college if we cannot afford it. Who knows what our finances will be at that time. Certainly our household size will be smaller. He will have to pick a school within the financial parameters of our family at that time.
So I think you should let your son go to the best option available to him. Then your daughter will have to choose among the options available at her time. You can guess what they will be, but you don’t know for sure. I don’t think you should penalize your son based on her uncertain future.
I’m not. So you know one.
The justification that I have heard from schools is that ignoring money saved for college would in essence be funding college. If you have the money, it is expected to be used. They want to be first in line, so to speak.
Some families don’t have 529s because there just isn’t enough after bills to put anything into it, not because we are buying new cars or jaunting off to Europe. Some of us just have careers that don’t pay much, like teaching.
So GP doesn’t expect you to use any of the college money?
Sox -
Do you know much about Madeira? I don’t and it is one (if not the only) school that is viable for my daughter. I’d love to hear more if you know anything about it.
Foxcroft is actually w/i driving distance. We have a lot of Foxcroft alumna at our school and some girls that go there. It is popular among the foxhunt kids & girls are encouraged to bring their ponies. The reality is that even if you have a pony (or 3) but choose not to board your pony because it doubles the cost…then you are not part of the “in” crowd. TBH, the climate kind of scares me for a FA kid. They are also not a strong academic school but I do believe they were at one time and that they are working hard to round that corner once again. An elderly woman died a few months ago and left $40m to Foxcroft and I think they have plans for some much-needed renovations. It’s not a bad school but probably a bad fit for our family.
As for the driving thing, actually 2 hours is the OUTSIDE time. He wants to be able to pop in when he can and take them to dinner or attend a game. So a school that is 2 hours away + event + drive home is really about max. 3 hours makes 6 hours of driving alone so that would be excessively difficult for a mid-week jaunt.
Neato -
Nice to meet you & glad to hear you are not playing the system. Counting us, now I know 2.
I do understand the bills. I am right there with you. Before FA families are approved, they should be doing everything to meet the bills. BOTH parents should be working FULL TIME, YEAR ROUND. I personally know 6 FA families with stay at home, college educated moms. My family of 2 working parents has to compete with them for FA because they don’t make enough to pay the bill. How did I draw the short straw (and you too!!!)???
If families are doing their level best then add up the income (NOT the savings NOR the spending) and calculate from an even playing field. That way, if a teacher makes $50k and chose NOT to buy those new towels at Kohls but saved the money instead, they don’t get penalized.
To penalize a family that has MADE THE SAME AS THE NEXT GUY but sacrificed to save/invest/purchase an asset makes an irrational assumption that they didn’t have bills to pay, too. They did! We all have bills and we all make decisions on how to use the money and IF to use it.
If I chose to spend my money then I should NOT get more FA than the guy that made the same and chose not to buy the new towels at Kohls and kept using the rags in his closet. We earned the same but made different choices.
“The justification that I have heard from schools is that ignoring money saved for college would in essence be funding college.”
This is an attempt to muddy and confuse the issue so that their formula appears to have merit.
If you look clearly at their formula, here is what happens with Fam1(spend) and Fam2(save) with the same income:
Fam1 spends and gets FA for BS and College.
Fam2 sacrifices to save and gets less/no FA for BS and less/no FA for college (because they are using their 529s when they get to college).
How does this make sense?
“If you have the money, it is expected to be used. They want to be first in line, so to speak”
529 money cannot be used for HS w/o incurring a huge penalty (set up legally to HIGHLY discourage people from using the funds for anything other than post-secondary education).
No, GP does not factor in 529s. Neither does our current school. And I don’t believe EHS does, either. Actually, MB is the only school I know for sure that massages FA based on 529s.
Hey Sox, I forgot to respond to your confusion as to why I’m so certain my DD won’t get FA in 2 years.
From where we live, there are few (if any) good fits that will give her aid.
I don’t know much about Madeira so I don’t know what their financial situation looks like and they are about the only school I have on my “possibilities” list right now. The others are not good fits for size, distance, ability to meet our FA needs, etc.
DD needs to earn the opportunity to attend BS just as much as my son did. HOWEVER, there are things she cannot “earn” that are completely out of her control: like having ANY schools that are “fits”.
Do we allow DS to attend GP knowing full well that our DD is highly UNlikely to have the chance to attend BS?
It’s a tough decision.
If you know of any schools that I may consider, I’d love to broaden the options.
WinchesterMom, I know several very nice girls who go to Madeira and love it. There’s a “girl power” atmosphere there that can be encouraging to young girls. If your daughter is fine with a fun, all-girl environment during high school, Madeira could be a good place for her. The girls tend to dress casually for class (as opposed to many coed schools where the girls are very focused on dressing for and impressing boys). I know Madeira girls have chances to mingle with the area boys’ schools, including Woodberry Forest and possibly GP.
On the Madeira website, there are back issues of the school magazine, and they will give you a sense of the “tone” of the school.
If Georgetown Prep is offering your son an amazing scholarship, you might want to jump at the chance. It’s true that GP has a small number of boarders, but if your son makes friends with the local kids, he will almost certainly be invited home with them quite a bit. Georgetown Prep is very, very well-respected. I’d take the advice of some of the other posters here and set your son on a good path. Your daughter’s path might end up looking different – possibly you could provide more funding later for her college bills – but you don’t want to cut off your son’s chances in the here-and-now. You mentioned homeschooling for your daughter – possibly you’re aware that there are some AMAZING homeschooling opportunities in the Berryville/Winchester area, including Classical Cottage School.
You’ll have to google map these to see exactly how far from your house but:
Garrison Forest School
Oldfields School
St James School
St Timothy’s School
Sandy Springs Friends School
West Nottingham Academy
Also, I know several who go to St Margaret’s/ Its a great environment, lots of stuff along the river, etc.
Hi BSBound! Thanks you so much for responding!
Do you know anything about FA at Madeira?
Until this year, we were always FP and this is our first go-round with FA.
What we have learned (the hard way) is that in the FA pool, you are assigned a bucket based on need.
The financial makeup of THE SCHOOL dictates whether or not your child will even get a look.
For instance, 2 of our choice schools had very different financial profiles.
1 gave us a ton of $$ and the other (less respected school) gave us less.
It has nothing to do with endowment. It has to do with the candidate base and available funds.
Being a strong candidate didn’t help DS at the less prestigious school as they need FP kids regardless of the kid’s profile. Their FA budget got used up by legacies, URMs, and hooks. There is no FA left over for anyone other than those buckets.
We were told (after the fact) that our FA need of 50% made the less prestigious school a REACH SCHOOL for us.
Not because of our DS profile but because of the FA needs of the school when paired with our needs.
Had we known that going in, we would have approached the whole process quite differently, I can assure you.
Having a better understanding of what happens under the covers, that less prestigious school will not be a school DD will apply to because our FA is not going to change. It will still be a REACH and they have already told us they cannot reach that far.
So I am searching for schools my DD has a chance of actually getting in (“fits” for my kid AND our financial needs!). It’s sticky and unsettling but it’s a reality.
If Madeira is also going to be a reach school, I would let her apply but want her to be aware there is a slim-to-none chance of getting off WL due to FA. What we really need is a school that is stocked full of FP so there is enough FA available. Is that Madeira?
And I am quite familiar with Cottage School! There are soooooooo many misconceptions about homeschooling. Our area has a world-class, VIBRANT homeschooling community that produces well-traveled, supremely well-educated kids who are not only bright but are also mature, engaged, conscientious, well-mannered, social kids. You can pick a Cottage School kid out in a heartbeat! My hurdle there is that I work full time so the social richness would be lacking at best (I don’t have the freedom to get my kids to the multitude of education available in their network!).
For what it’s worth, we have a son at a school that is just slightly under three hours from our house and we don’t find the drive prohibitive. Would I rather that the round trip drive was 4 hours instead of almost 6? Of course. But it’s still perfectly doable to go for a game or to go out to dinner. We don’t make it to all of his games, certainly, but we do go to many of them, or just to take him and some friends out to dinner. I really don’t find the drive to be the end of the world. And I’d be willing to drive a lot further than that if there weren’t any other good educational opportunities close by.
Hi Sox,
I agree about the drive but we cannot do 6 hrs + an event during the week and still get up for work. Nor can we expect that our of our 6th grader midweek.
We do have local options: public and homeschooling.
I don’t think the school they are slated to attend is a great plan but the school in the next county (45 min commute with their dad) has a well-respected IB program.
And we have a very rich homeschooling community but I would need to figure out how to make that option work on a social level since I work full time.
I can’t imagine that MB or any BS would expect anyone to use current 529 funds when they are ineligible for secondary education and would not only drain the fund but also incur the additional cost of a penalty for misuse. What Choate explained to us is that from the amount in the 529 and our admission that it was all funded by our income (no gifts from grandparents, etc.), they could see that stopping further contributions might enable us to be full pay. We bit that bullet.
There aren’t all that many events mid-week though, and the kids are occupied enough with homework on school nights that they don’t want to go out to dinner then. But even if you were there on a weeknight, if you leave campus at, say, 9, you’re home at midnight. How big a difference is it to be home at midnight a couple of times a year instead of 11 pm? Anyway, you obviously feel strongly that 2 hours is the magic number, and so be it. I was just trying to push your thinking a bit so that you’re sure you’ve thought outside the box about all possible options.
ChoatieMom,
Yep! MB actually told me that verbally and in emails. (Email even showed an fictitious 529 amount and how they divide it up!) And they said they don’t get involved in penalties, etc. because they are not financial planners. It’s just the way they like to do it. They called it their protocol for handling 529s.
They said that the 529 is going to allow us to take out fewer loans for college (duuuh, yep!) than the next guy.
Unfortunately, the “next guy” makes the same but didn’t save/invest along the way and he’s getting rewarded and they are dinging us. They just chop the money off the offer. Gone.
Go figure.
So, no. The FA at MB was drastically reduced by their 529 protocol so the WERE among our top choices and dropped to dead last (behind our local public option which is scary!). And unless they alter the protocol, we won’t bother applying with DD.
Beautiful school, though. With solid academics & stunning arts complex. And if we were selecting schools on AOs, my son and I both said hands-down Quentin McDowell would win over every school we visited. He is a genuine, sweet gentleman.
@WinchesterMom: I find that as outrageous as you do. Unbelievable!
I assure you that not everyone getting FA is “playing the system.” Some of us have little idea what the “system” even is. 
Anyway, I do hope your children aren’t hearing that opinion from you. I’m sure you wouldn’t want them to say something like that at school. We’re getting FA because we don’t have money. We don’t have money because we made our life choices on the basis of factors other than the probability of financial success. We have not been to Italy.
I was going to chime in along the same lines as twinsmama. While we all know a few families who “game the system” (have lots of assets, live pretty high on the hog, manage to convince schools they have very little income), most of the kids we know on FA absolutely need it in order to attend BS. In fact, some families who are totally FP make a lot of sacrifices in order to send their kids to BS-- no great vacations, dinners out, fancy house updates for them. I think it’s a little insulting to assume all those people who have made those sacrifices or just have very little money are “gaming” the system. I was kind of waiting for Stargirl to chime in, but maybe she hasn’t seen this. That said, I agree it must feel terrible to be “punished” for saving in a 529. I’m just saying please don’t assume everyone else is either cheating or has lived more irresponsibly than you.
TwinsMama -
My kids don’t need to hear my opinion. All they need to do is look around and engage their brains.
- Their friend A's mom is a college-educated, SAH mom who gets FA. She attends all the class parties and tells all the working moms all about what we missed. They talk about their trips to the beach, adventures swimming with sharks, eat at the local restaurants, shop at the gourmet markets, and attend ballets at the Kennedy Center. Oh, I almost forgot her new skis/boots/bindings/poles AND that when she went shopping at Lord & Taylor, the DD could not decide on 1 dress so they bought 3!!! This mom recently told me that she was getting cheated by NOT taking FA for so many years. Now she knows what they check and she shuffles expenses around accordingly. She said she was a fool for not doing it sooner & laughed about how easy it is.
- Another FA family they know has a single mom. They went skiing in Canada 1.5 years ago to celebrate New Year's and went ice climbing while they were there. The following summer they went to Jamaica to a private villa which also had a private chef. Last year it was SFO and Monterey, staying in a luxury home with a glass floor where the ocean rushes under the home.
- Their friend W's mom is a college-educated, SAH mom who gets FA. She says her husband travels so it is too difficult to manage a work schedule. (I could offer her lessons.....!)
- Friends N&W have a college-educated, SAH mom who gets FA. They have a nanny; spent +$5k on camps last summer and told us we should really check them out because they are so exclusive; eat out all the time; and are taking a family trip to China this summer.
- Friend E's Ivy-educated single-mom dresses her boy in ONLY designer clothes (including designer eyeglasses!) & gets all new electronics the week they are released. They get FA.
- Friend B's mom is a doctor (pediatrician) & works PT & they get FA. B is in Spain this week on his class trip.
I can go on if you would like…
We all know the old saying: to have your cake and eat it, too. You can go to Italy and have your FA, too!