<p>I used this calculator to estimate what my payment would be. It is for college, but works the same for boarding school. !</p>
<p>NYC, do you honestly think a schools financial aid committee charts your income compared to other parents of their student body and determines your grant based how you measure up? </p>
<p>This is at least the 2nd time that you have maintained this premise:
[quote]
2) we were comp less needy
[/quote]
[quote]
Also, if the applicant is less affluent than most families attending the sch s/he is likely to get a finaid award.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In my experience, I don't think that is true. I believe a school reviews the SSS recommended contribution and reviews how much money is available in their Financial Aid fund, and how much the school wants the child (which could be for a variety of reasonsrecruited athlete, URM, off-the-charts whiz kid, etc )</p>
<p>If a school does create a chart, it is similar to St. Pauls:
1. You make xx amount of money
2. You can afford to pay xx amount
3. We want your child
4. We give you xx amount. </p>
<p>I truly dont believe schools look at your application and say, this middle-class family is competitively more needy because the majority of our parents make over a million dollars, so let's give this kid more $.</p>
<p>A school might have some general sense of the average wealth of its students' families, but they can't really know that number because parents who don't ask for FA don't (usually) inform the school as to their net worth/annual income/credit score.</p>
<p>While I am sure that it's true that financial aid recipients tend to be less affluent than most families at a boarding school, it hardly follows that that increases your chances of receiving an award.</p>
<p>It's like any budget. You use it as wisely as you can to get the most of what you need...and then the most of what you want if you've met all of your needs. You don't spend your budget on items that cost more without making the decision that there's some qualitative or meritorious basis for spending more. In the context of FA decisions, the more money they think you need, the more money that they're going to have to spend and thus, the more worth it you're going to have to be. If you help fulfill a need, you're in good shape. If you fulfill a want, you've still got a shot. But if you're asking for money that they could spend on an unmet need and you offer nothing more than what they can achieve for free (no FA, full pay)...you're not going to get admitted (or you'll get a nil FA award).</p>
<p>If I'm on a $1,000 budget, I'm buying food, rent, gas money...maybe a movie to keep me sane...but I'm not looking at a big screen TV and thinking that I spend money on it because it costs MORE than the other big screen TVs, even though it might have an inferior technology or be just as good as the big screen TV at Village Pizza where the TV watching comes free with the dinner I'm buying.</p>
<p>Even at the billion dollar endowment schools, financial aid is a limited resource so it has to be used wisely. Notice that a few schools say that their admissions is need blind. FA awards, however, are never admission- or merit-blind.</p>
<p>Enrollment management - using your FA budget to get the best students you can at the least cost - is a black art where a lot of formulae come into play.</p>
<p>I think for many schools there is a mix of the following types of packages:</p>
<p>Gotta have this to make certain programs work - These are your star athletes, musicians, dancers, etc. They are one of a kind people who are not easily substituted. They tend to get enough FA offered to make them come to X school over. If you have more than 1 in a category the #1 will get the top offer and the other will be waitlisted (or given $0) for FA.</p>
<p>Want to have plenty of these to make our overall goals - These are your kids who help make various programs and diversity goals, but the school doesn't need all of the ones who apply to make their goals. They tend to get FA offers that are reasonably generous, but not where everyone will take it. How close to perfect depends upon how much the student brings to the school.</p>
<p>Like to have many of these because they improve the school - These are the kids who are significantly above average academically. Their FA offers will tend to vary with how much the school thinks it can afford. If they also fall into the ones who help make overall goals, they get the most generous treatment.</p>
<p>Solid Contributors - These are the kids who the school knows will be at or above average. They are considered plentiful, so they get a basic discount on the school, but their offers are considered weak. If they help make overall goals, they can get OK offers, but nothing spectacular.</p>
<p>I think when evaluating your options as to where to apply, you have to consider which of these categories you fall at in a school.</p>
<p>jennycraig--
Good news (possibly) for you. The FAFSA calculation to determine EFC (estimated family contribution) can have vastly different results from the PFS/SSS contribution for pre-college.</p>
<p>You'd really have to fill out both to see the difference for your family. For our family there is a $10k difference with SSS. (FAFSA was $10k higher)</p>
<p>To get an idea of our EFC for S's high school contribution, we submitted a PFS in January 2007, although we will apply for real this January. We were shocked to see our EFC cut in half since D attended BS. This is primarily due to D now attending college. Interesting to note that the college tuition is factored into consideration by SSS, but the high school tuition is not considered for the FAFSA.</p>
<p>The big mystery piece of the PFS is where they ask you how much you can afford for THIS student. At the time you fill in a number, you may have no idea of the number the PFS will spit out, so it's a crap shoot. You don't want to put down a number that is significantly lower than your EFC or the school will figure you can't meet your EFC and may not accept your child as a result! Other schools will ignore that number, so it is simply one more mystery in the admissions process!</p>
<p>Goaliedad, thanks for that great explanation of how FA works. Now the trick is to figure out how to find the schools that my son would fit into the top category. Perhaps instead of looking at the top lax programs, he should look at programs that need to improve their lacrosse.</p>
<p>My S emailed the lacrosse coaches at the schools we are visiting. He plays premier soccer also, so he decided to email the soccer caoches also. Within a day, a soccer coach (at a top school) emailed him back wanting to know more info about his experience, a letter from his present coach and a tape of him playing. We were both surprised because we had no idea that soccer even mattered that much to this school. Interestingly at the same school, we couldn't find the lacrosse coach's email. </p>
<p>I had no idea how involved this whole process of applying to BS would be.</p>
<p>We had very good experiences with the FA part of the top prep schools and have been offered both the exact (to the penny) of what SSS calculated and also a generous amount over that. I just found that some schools FA departments were better organizationally-wise than others and you find that problem with other departments as well. For example, at a school that begins with an "E," we had two major areas that they could not get their act together, both with the interview scheduling and then toward the end when my child was put on the wait list. She was accepted at other top tier schools so we didn't stay long on the wait list there, but they started sending her information on how to sign up for her classes when she was still on the wait list? It was an obvious mistake on their part and I immediately contacted them in hopes that they would not have a widespread problem within their admissions office where students on the wait list were being sent information that should only be sent to accepted/enrolled students. At that time of year the emotions run so high for the kids, especially those who are on wait lists only and want desperately to be accepted at a school. Anyway, you could tell from the phone call that they just blamed the mistake on other people at the school and I found the whole thing very unprofessional and thought they were very disorganized. That of course stemmed from their disorganization with the interview schedule also. That school was far from her first choice so it was fine, but I guess my point was that our experience was that if the admissions office seems to have their act together, then the FA office (within the admissions office) is most likely also going to do their job well. </p>
<p>I would highly recommend that you don't allow the need for FA to give you any hesitation at all to applying to any school. Most are very generous with FA when they can see that you live a lifestyle within your means and spend your earnings prudently. If you own a tremendous house and drive cars that you cannot afford and go on fabulous vacations, then asking for financial aid from a school and expecting them to pay for your kid's education because of the way you overspend in your life is going to be fruitless. I hope that helps.</p>