Our HS asked for this and we gladly provided it. The college counselors helped my kids with the info gathered from previous classes, so we were fine with paying it forward.
At the beginning of the college counseling rodeo, they do ask the parents to share what their annual budget per year for the kid’s school is. As all you CC-ers know, if you don’t know that number your college search is basically a waste of time.
The school does report the goofy number on how the graduating class earned 9 trillion dollars in scholarships. Whatev.
Our kids are not asked and if they were we likely would not provide it. I hate the whole, “our graduates were offered a gazillion dollars of merit aid!” I think it encourages trophy-hunting. I might privately give it to the GC so she could help future students.
Because the GC was aware of the competitive scholarship DS17 entered (she had to write a rec,) she has received updates from the University since the official press release regarding the award. He has declined offers of extra information to be sent to the school so honestly, I’m quite curious if it gets mentioned or not Because he goes to a school that focuses heavily on prestige and has several going to top name universities, it may well get glossed over and really, he’s ok with that.
My kids school misuses the information, in that they do not differentiate between FA and merit when they talk up awards, so I don’t give them the $$$ stats. I saw kids on stage at an awards night where their award for such and such a school was cited but that they had chosen to go to the local U instead. My take was that this was just inadequate FA because the schools were need based award schools. Do we really need that to be paraded? The parents and kids that have a clue, already had the clue.
Our public school asked, but included the option for us to include or exclude need-based aid totals, and included the option for us to publicly report any personal total we felt appropriate. So, of a class of around 400, they listed the total “scholarship” aid for roughly 225 kids, and then noted that the 330 kids who reported aid earned XX.X million in scholarships. Most of the top ten kids did not report their personal scholarship information - so the kid who was like 18th in the class earned the highest total scholarships - since she applied to like 33 schools - and was going to Flagship state with her boyfriend - and not on the full ride she was offered elsewhere.
We chose not to make the information public/personal, since our pups were applying to full-needs met schools only, but we did share it with the GC, because we’ve known her for years since our pups were in pre-school together. She could certainly guess our financial situation, and she is the type of person who will offer help where she can, despite the school policy not to ask about financial information other than to officially recommend that students and parents review the schools NPC before applying. They used to ask parents to sign a note saying they had read about the NPC information before the GC would provide the transcript/recommendation, but got too much pushback/flack from full-pay families. So the compromise is to allow the GC to read from a generalized paragraph saying the GC is not giving financial advice but they understand that finances often play a meaningful role in the families decision process,so the school policy is to officially recommend that families review the NPC and discuss the implications with their own financial advisors before applying.
To be fair, if we hadn’t had a personal relationship with the GC before HS, we might not have shared any of the information.
We shared my daughter’s merit scholarship at the school she attended with her high school. They didn’t ask; we volunteered the information because her college has guaranteed merit scholarships but the high school didn’t seem to be aware of that. We didn’t tell them about scholarships from schools she wasn’t planning to attend. We didn’t get financial aid, but if we did there is no way I would tell the high school about it - I just don’t see what that would accomplish, not to mention I wouldn’t want to disclose information about our financial situation.
We have never been asked. Our SD has local scholarships that are offered. Some require FA info and some are merit based. S17 applied only for merit ,money because the likelihood of his getting any other scholarship was so remote that I didn’t have him bother. He was told that he should apply for a scholarship offered by one specific group and that he would likely get it but I didn’t want to provide our tax returns.
Our school asks but only wants merit scholarships for the school the student will attend. They require proof that the student will actually attend the university.
If we were asked, my DS hasn’t mentioned it to me. I did recently look back at a financial aid presentation the GCs used junior parents last year. I noted this time that the sample aid letter was from the school my DS will attend (shocked) and because of it, I knew to ask for additional resources. All the identifying student info was removed.
My school system loves to brag about the scholarship money earned. I asked my child’s school if it was merit aid only, (because need-based aid can be termed “scholarship” by the college). The guidance secretary said they knew how to tell the difference. Laughable. Oh, no they do NOT at a large public high school. They got it mixed up. Didn’t even get my child’s amount right (they were $260,000 off).
We provided both need and merit aid info for our two children. At the graduation ceremony, the principal only reported the merit aid which is understandable. I was happy to share the need-based aid information with our GC since he could add the LAC to his list of affordable colleges for middle-class families.
Because he goes to a school that focuses heavily on prestige and has several going to top name universities, it may well get glossed over and really, he’s ok with that.