How much weight do you give to Financial Aid in making a decision?

Our daughter has applied to girls schools, many of which release decisions before M10, so we have a couple of acceptances, and some include merit awards. How do you account for cost in making a choice about a school? If your family likes School B, and it offers substantial merit aid, do you choose it over School A if School A is the one you really love, but there is no aid and there is a huge tuition gap? How do you “love the one that loves you” without feeling like you picked the school primarily for financial reasons? Also, do you know if it is possible to negotiate with schools?

I hope this makes sense and is not an inappropriate question. My husband and I are very much in the “love the ones that love you” camp and feel so grateful for and honored by any aid offers, but our daughter is just in love with the most expensive school to which she applied.

If it’s not affordable, you need to move on. Some families want to at least have the gratification of having been accepted, so schools do that. Often, though, families “find” the money - a relative funds the difference or the family had the money and was just testing the waters.

There is no harm in approaching them with a competing offer and asking if they can match (and guarantee the funds through graduation), but usually, they offer what they feel is reasonable.

I would keep in mind that after prep school you are going to have 4 years of university to pay for, possibly followed by graduate school. Master’s degrees, medical degrees, and veterinary degrees are frequently not funded and can be expensive. If you can only splurge once, I personally would do so when looking at universities or when looking at graduate/medical/veterinary schools.

There is no way that I would take on debt to attend a prep school. If you look at students at highly ranked universities, a LOT of them attended public high schools. Prep schools have a higher percentage of their graduates attend top 20 schools, but a lot of this is due to the type of student that attends prep schools in the first place.

I think that this puts me solidly in the “love the school that loves you” camp.

Of course the exact same issue will come up again when you are looking at university and college acceptance and financial aid letters in a few years.

In our experience with two BS kids, we’ve had a school match another FA offer for one kid, and another school NOT match an offer for another kid (different schools all around, btw). It’s worth asking, IMO…but I’d only do it if you are really trying to choose between two schools…don’t waste people’s time if you are really leaning toward another school.

But I think gardenstategal hits the nail on the head with this: “If it’s not affordable, you need to move on.” That’s the bottom line. So going back to your example, is School A is still affordable (even if it means eating ramen for a few years) then why not?

FWIW, I’ve always applied the “love the school that loves you” thing to admission, not necessarily to FA. Because some schools are simply richer than others and so can afford to give more FA.

you have to be honest with yourself, can you / slash kid afford the school. What does said kid get to go to the more affordable school, less debt, less stress. let your daughter know school A - her choice afford x and school B - offered a great package, is she ready and willing to get into debt either to you or a bank for the difference.
I just had this conversation w my wife tonight, son got into Uminn but got no merit aid ( we are OOS) we figured it would be about 55k out of pocket per year w him taking 20K in loans from the gov’t. Our state flagship is roughly half of this cost. Similar ranked Business schools. Spending about a quarter of a million dollars for UMINN does not seem like a good investment , esp with one brother behind him. I have told all my kids apply where ever you want but when all the aid packages come in we will all decide what makes sense.

@NJdad07090: I’m pretty certain that the OP is talking about boarding/prep schools (high school), not college.

@SevenDad ,
Sorry I thought it was college.

However, if the more expensive high school will result in a more restrictive budget for college, that needs to be considered.

I appreciate all of the responses and your perspectives! We are continuing to urge our daughter to love the schools that love her!

Budget of course is such a personal decision – what is “worth it” to one person may not be “worth it” to another.

As a mom of four, I feel like we are always trying to find a balance – supporting each child’s dreams and futures, while also recognizing that everything won’t always be exactly equal every month or year.

One strategy we have found helpful to get a sense for what each kid truly values is to offer some tradeoff options to help them fully understand $ value. (Sure, my kids know what 20 bucks is when they go to the mall, but really – the larger numbers all blend together sometimes for a kid who hasn’t ever handled thousands of dollars.)

For example, I’ll just make something up – Let’s say my DD was scheduled to get our old car when she turns 16. I might explore with her: would you be willing to give up having that car and selling it to help pay for the price differential between the two schools? If the answer is a resounding YES! then I know more about how much she values the difference between the two school options. But if she hesitates, that is a valuable piece of information – knowing that she may like school B more than we realized. Again – just a random example, and not a really good one since BS kids don’t need cars. But my point is: discussing what tradeoffs might help us close the gap helps define the value better for kids, who sometimes may not fully appreciate what 5k or 10k a year truly means. Kids tend to put preferences into binary “I like A more than B” and the result is digging heels in on option A (at all costs) – so trying to help them discern how MUCH more they prefer something is a subtle, trickier business that involves appreciation for tradeoffs.

Writing the cost/benefits all down on paper can also help depersonalize the discussion, which can feel a little like “parents saying NO” to something, which causes heels to dig further.

@Calliemomofgirls thank you for your thoughtful response. I like your approach very much, and it is something I will work on trying with my daughter. Currently, we are looking at a difference in $40,000 per year, which surely is like Monopoly money to her, but would definitely impact the rest of the family. I think she ultimately will have to choose between the schools that are less affordable, and we will hope that she won’t always have “what if” thoughts.

@southernfemmom Holy cow – that is a BIG difference.
I almost wonder if a slightly different strategy might be in order. 40k is a crazy difference. Maybe the shift needs to be in celebrating school B, and the fact that they loved her THAT MUCH. That is a crazy amount of love to be getting from school B! I realize we may be talking about some combination of FA/merit, but remember that there is a fair amount of leeway in how much FA is offered even if considered purely FA (clearly since one school offered so much more), so my point is: school B really does see something special in your DD. If they are calling it “merit” then this celebration might be easier. But even if it’s partly or even all “FA,” there is still something huge that they are seeing in your DD. I might lean into the emotional, beautiful, celebratory narrative more than the financial logical one here. Partly because 40k is hard to get to in tradeoffs. And partly because, at least in our house, school A wouldn’t be an option. And MOSTLY because such a huge vote of confidence from school B really is something to celebrate. It’s a beautiful story, and I hope your whole family leans into the joy of it.

Thanks @Calliemomofgirls! Actually, yes, the award is strictly Merit, and we are super honored and delighted that they want her so much. Tying in to my response to you in another thread, though, a major issue is that we have not visited this school yet, and are a little panicked that, between that school’s spring break, which starts tomorrow, and the coronavirus spread, we don’t know how to make a decision without seeing it. We absolutely LOVE school B on paper. We truly think it is the best fit for her, but it is in a state no one in our family has ever been to before, and just because it looks great on paper and the AOs answers to our questions have been wonderful, doesn’t fix that she is having a hard time really embracing School B, sight unseen, when she had a fabulous overnight experience at super expensive School A. (However, School A hasn’t even released its acceptances yet, so there is a chance she won’t get it, which would make it easy, but she’s good really good stats)

For $40k/year, I would tell my kid to start at school B and if he REALLY hated it & was absolutely miserable by the end of the first semester, we could talk about applying to transfer for 10th.

That’s like buying a new car every single year, or a cheap house for the total 4 years.

I do not disagree, but to some extent, aren’t many of us choosing boarding school over local public schools despite the cost? There are many full pay students in boarding school. At what point is “better” not “worth it”? I expect that varies greatly on a case by case basis, and is influenced by a multitude of factors. Its a sliding scale, I suppose. I just wonder how much weight others have given cost in the decision making process.

@southernfemmom Your point is a good one – we do have a free option (LPS) that we are saying no to. So obviously cheaper isn’t always better. I think the difference here is that I’m assuming that you already vetted school B as being somewhat comparable to school A, or it wouldn’t be on your list. That said, BS application lists may well include schools that are “worth considering” but are far from “equal.”

So to answer your question: how much more is a school on one’s list worth versus the others? And I think that answer is based on one’s estimation of fit, which would include everything from academics to personality of kids, faculty, buildings, etc etc etc.

So as I sit and consider our list – the de facto cost to us will definitely play a huge role in choosing a school. However, the cheapest will not necessarily win out, depending on the cost differential. The “top” school on our BS list, however, is less than $40k/year “better” than the “bottom” one. Ten grand? maybe. But even the “worst” school on our list is amazing, and I’d be thrilled for my DD to attend.

Put another way: if saving 40K a year isn’t a no-brainer for choosing school B, then maybe there are some really good reasons that are giving you pause? could it be that either: 40k means less to you than it means to me (which I say in no negative way – it may well be a question of a small sacrifice for some folks, like skipping one family vacation, which is kind of no big deal), OR it may be that somewhere deep inside, you recognize that maybe school B really isn’t the right fit for your DD, and perhaps shouldn’t have been on your list after all, despite the 40K difference?

Money is hard to talk about it, especially on the internet, so please know I mean all of this to be helpful. Feel free to ignore completely if not.

@Calliemomofgirls thank you. Your response is lovely, thoughtful, and helpful.

On paper, husband and I love school B. It is comparable in many ways to school A. But, the merit award was a shock. We applied to the school sight unseen and have not visited. We are trying hard to arrange a visit and hope corona virus will not impact those plans. But school B is far away and seems scary solely because we have not been there and no one in our circle had heard of it (but it is a good school that is one of the girls schools that comes up occasionally on CC).

School A we had an outstanding visit. It is easier to get to. We had heard of it before applying and know people who have been there. It feels like a “safer” bet. But the more we dig in and learn about School B, the more we love it. I truly think Daughter will choose School B … she is really feeling the love and researching all their programs. It’s just that School A has been “The One” for months and the surprise scholarship has rocked our world in a wonderful way, but we are trying to not make a decision only on money, but on what is the best choice for our whole family.

@southernfemmom Thanks for sharing your decision process here with all of us – we all benefit from each others’ experiences. I know your situation has helped me think through some things for us – I think (hope?) we’ll have some hard decisions to make too soon.

Our LPS has gangs and no honors classes before 11th… All 9th graders have to take algebra 1 and the highest math course is pre-calc. So yeah, it’s definitely worth paying $55+k/year to avoid.

We thought about renting a place in San Francisco and sending him to the exam school there (Lowell) but the annual rent probably would be at least as much as we’d pay for BS. And he wouldn’t get as much personal attention from teachers at a huge school (2700 students) as he would at BS (most of the ones he applied to are in the 300-600 range).

@CrimsonWife I hear you, and am sorry you don’t have a good local option. I agree I’d rather spend to avoid the situation you describe. We are in a similar situation with the public school for our zone, but have good local private options where our son is thriving, but our daughter is wilting, thus the school search for her. So, we definitely are “in” for paying more, it’s just a question of finding the balance of value.

@Calliemomofgirls I am flattered that our process is helping you in any way! I am so grateful for this online community that is so generous with their perspectives. BS is not at all the norm in our southern town, so I am incredibly thankful for all I have learned reading threads and for the kind responses I have received to questions.

I hope we all get great news next week and can make happy, affordable decisions about schools where all our kids will thrive.