<p>There are also quite a number of wealthy, snobby kids at public school as well, depending on where you’re from. I’m not going to start talking about how deerhotch’s view is skewed, because everyone has already proven that to be true. Just nobody has brought up the fact that masses of wealthy, pretentious students don’t magically gravitate to top boarding schools.</p>
<p>I think deerhotch does have a point-it is harder if you are an FA applicant. However, it isn’t the end of the world if you are one. However, his generalization of prep school kids as snobs just leads down to pure jealousy. Dude, get it over with. We really don’t care.</p>
<p>I come from a town FULL of rich kids who are snobs and rely on money for everything. Those who applied for prep school seemed to be the only qualified applicants: street smart/book smart and genuinly friendly. Everyone applied for financial aid, and each got 98% on the ssat. NONE of them had any connections or werenlegacies besides one of my friends. Prel school students are chosen based their stats. A huge legacy to andover did not get in, which proves deerhotch’s statement wrong…</p>
<p>I am very surprised that the boarding schools I am in touch with have continued their commitments to a higher level of Financial Aid, even though the general economy of the country is in the dumps, and will be for years to come.</p>
<p>Are you folks clueless? Most of the folks right here on CC that were WL/denied with excellent stats are FA kids. So don’t cajole yourselves.</p>
<p>How can you back up that statement with stats?</p>
<p>Plus, who is to say that a full-pay student, possibly taken over a FA student, isn’t equally qualified? I needed a good amount of financial aid. I’m not a legacy, and I’m not overly connected. It’s true, I was waitlisted at Choate, but that doesn’t mean the students who were accepted are less qualified than I am. </p>
<p>And most of these schools have a <20% acceptance rate. Anywhere you go, you’ll find tons of kids who didn’t get in. CC doesn’t harbor the only competitive prep school applicants.</p>
<p>Cassat, I have tons of friends at HADES. I know how qualified they are, how well-connected they are. You really don’t know until you see all the profiles of the 1000 kids at Andover. Extrapolations are easy to make from a handful of observations, but they have to be statistically significant.</p>
<p>I know the statistics are out there. Ratio of FA to FP students in 2009 as compared to admits in 2011. It will vary a bit from school to school, but I believe it has remained the same in the HADES schools.</p>
<p>Honestly, what is with the amount of negativity on CC these days regarding financial aid at boarding schools? Top schools, as well as many lower-tier schools, are making the largest possible commitments to financial aid, and several boarding schools have remained officially need-blind even in the economic climate of today. Andover happens to be one of these schools doling out upwards of $17 million next year to support 47% of the student body and pay full tuition for 12%, and while PA is certainly a leader in this area, they are not alone in committing as much as they possibly can towards admitting every applicant who is sufficiently qualified, regardless of ability to pay.</p>
<p>That’s why I simply can’t even begin to understand all the hyperbole about rich kids having a significant advantage over FA kids. At non-need-blind schools, full-pay kids will obviously have an advantage in the admissions process, but it would be a severe, severe exaggeration to say that most rejected applicants are financial aid applicants. Plenty of full-pay applicants with exceptional stats are also rejected. This is partly because FP kids are not often favored to an enormous degree, even at non-need-blind schools, and partly because it simply takes more than good stats to get into top schools nowadays. It takes luck, too.</p>
<p>Thanks Tom.
In addition, the schools that I am currently affiliated with financially have told me that due to the US financial crisis, there are more Full Pay students that get into a financial bind during the school year, and need new Financial Aid to be able to continue at the school and graduate. These schools have stepped up to the task, by not lowering the annual percentage of financial aid admittances, but by adding the current students in need to the roster of those already on financial aid.
All this is quite admirable in my opinion. It brings new meaning to the cliche “Noblesse Oblige”.</p>
<p>tom you come from a legacy perspective you dont know what its like to work hard to get in alright and your british which is an extremely underrepresented country. prep schools are a business and im sorry that im the one that has to explain it to you but honestly, the only reason why hades are so selective is becuase a large number of FA applicants apply and they only accept kids who can pay full blow, they accept all the full blow kids and then the pick out the fa applicants so 1800 fa applicants are competing for maybe 100 spots that provide fa to students.</p>
<p>You’re right, I am a legacy. But I did, and do, work extremely hard. Straight A’s from my old high school, plus a 99th percentile SSAT, a club presidency here and board memberships to two others, plus dorm proctorship and most recently a 2300 on the SAT - not to toot my own horn, but I work pretty damn hard, and I’m not going to have a bitter CC poster take that away from me. But go ahead, blame my achievements on my Andover grad mother. Tell me I was raised to achieve and that that’s the end of it.</p>
<p>Additionally, your FA rant is garbage. Absolute garbage. HADES prep schools distribute aid to 30-50% of the student body which, incidentally, is around the percentage of applicants who apply for financial aid. I’ll accept that non-need-blind schools are not fully egalitarian in admission of heavy FA applicants, but HADES schools aren’t selective solely because of the FA pool. Where on earth did you get the idea that FP kids get in automatically? Boy, are you beyond reasoning with if you believe that…</p>
<p>your logic is garbage becuase you cant say anything you already said on another post that you went to an american private school in england so that goes against everything that i said re-read the post and then go make another ignorant comment. you just dont understand because your trying to defend your school in pretty sure if u didnt attend andover your perspective would be much different, and none of this even applies to you because you go to andover and your just trying to defend yourself and your schools. sorry tom your not a special as you thought you were and i you completely proved all my point, prep school kids are ignorant and dont care about anyone but themselves. prep schools are a business and im sorry that im the one that has to explain that to you but you just do not understand. stop embarrassing yourself</p>
<p><em>bangs head against wall</em></p>
<p>Im afraid that as hard as people try, some ignorance will always remain present in this world. Dont waste your time.</p>
<p>You claim to have defended your logic… But truth be told, I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. Are you saying FA students are never admitted? I’m one of them, so that’s clearly not true. And making blanket statements about our personalities is one thing that I don’t think I’ll ever understand. Why are you posting this, when you know that you’re going to get very few, if any, sympathizers?</p>
<p>Deerhotch is a bitter jailbird somewhere in N mass. in a cell (where he belongs) with only a computer to entertain himself.</p>
<p>It’s Ok if others have opinions different from yours. You can agree to disagree. No need for name calling.</p>
<p>Sarum, You are an adult. Don’t call teens names. This behavior is unbecoming of a BS community.</p>
<p>Sarum just gets off on bashing kids on a prep school forum, some people just have no life so they put kids down. if harassing kids makes him feel better thats his problem.</p>