I’m looking into some school and they don’t have a financial aid estimator so I have no idea if they could meet my family’s needs. And of course, I can’t really apply if our family can’t afford it.
Of course. There’s no real harm in asking. My only worry is that they may not be need blind, even still you wouldn’t want to end up enrolling into a school that won’t meet enough of your aid anyway. Also, the financial aid estimators can only make a good guess on how much you may have to contribute. If your family’s finances are unique, it may be off.
It will be difficult to get a realistic answer without an application… until the school FA officer sees your family’s financial details, and the Admissions office sees the strength of your application, they can’t really give you an answer. Many schools will make a real effort to get the students that they really want to enroll. It’s very personalized, and prep school FA is completely different from the college FA process/decisions. However, they may be able to share with you general info such as “Last year we received 40 applications for full FA and were only able to fund 4 of those.” FA does play a big part in admissions decisions for most schools.
I am not sure how meaningful any answer you get will be (aside from understanding the # of applicants to packages). My son applied to a school for admission in 2017 and we were looking for almost full aid. He was admitted to that school with no FA. Shortly before the school year started (late August), the same schools admissions office reached out to us about my daughter potentially attending (to fill a need on a sports team). We discussed that the need for her would be the same as for my son, and they tired to make it work, but all the money was already gone for that school year. Knowing the amount of FA need, they strongly encouraged us to have my daughter apply for this year when they would have money in budget. She continued to be recruited by coach, we communicated school was top choice and on decision day, she was accepted with no FA offered.
After going through this process, the best advice is to cast a very very wide net, including more than one school you consider “safety” if you need financial aid. There were 3 schools (out of the 9 she applied to) I felt extremely confident would accept my daughter and give FA, and in the end we wound up being fortunate that one school came through. None of the others did.