<p>I would not put things quite as strongly as alliekinz but I partially agree with her. “Need-based” financial aid allows children from low-income families to attend schools with high list prices, but it also creates disincentives for families to work and save.</p>
<p>Beliavsky and Alliekinz: The more aid an applicant needs, the less likely is their admission. (Most schools would rather give more partial aid packages than fewer total aid packages from a fixed amount for financial aid.) Thus, if you want to go to BS, it is better “to work and save” than to try to be low-income. Same holds true for college applicants. </p>
<p>Low-income families are a low percentage of the population on any campus. Students from these families are very capable with lots of potential if they are admitted against great statistical odds that favor the more affluent.</p>
<p>Truly gifted, and very admissible, children all the time are born to parents with little means, whose poverty is explained for all sorts of reasons. (Don’t forget about the middle-aged professionals down-sized during the Great Recession whose job prospects remain grim through no fault of their own; economists say that recovery given these global circumstances takes more than a few years. For others, work at the minimum wage can be both demanding and done with dignity.)</p>
<p>@Beliavsky and Alliekinz,
I’ve not seen your names on the prep school board before, so I don’t know if you have any experience with or intention of applying to one of these elite prep schools. </p>
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<p>At the most well-endowed prep schools, families with incomes as high as $250k may qualify for some FA. That pretty much comprises the 98%. I would not exactly categorize the 98% (which includes successful doctors, engineers, professors & lawyers) as academic and economic slackers.</p>
<p>And I think you are confusing ‘qualifying for FA’ with being synonymous with ‘being admitted’. Generally, the more FA a student needs, the less likely he/she will be admitted. From the feedback I’ve heard from S, the impression many kids have about their peers in these elite schools is that the uber wealthy ones coasted in and the FA ones have outstanding merit.</p>
<p>Again, I pose to you: as this is not public money, but money from private donors, WHAT IS IT TO YOU?</p>
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<p>True, most families that need FA to allow their kids to attend one of these schools do not save money to attend these schools. But that is usually because, unlike wealthy families who have been sending Muffy & Biff to prep school for multiple generations, poor/middle class families generally do not have prep school on their radars, let alone their vocabulary. By the time the poor/middle class families discover that their local public school options are abysmal, it is too late to accumulate adequate savings for the tuition.</p>
<p>GMTplus7 wrote, “Again, I pose to you: as this is not public money, but money from private donors, WHAT IS IT TO YOU?”</p>
<p>No need to shout. Money from private donors can be used to heavily subsidize some students. It can also be used to reduce the list price for everyone. I prefer that it mostly be used to do the latter. This is essentially a political preference, which some people will agree with and others will disagree with.</p>
<p>Donor money is indeed used to subsidize the list price for EVERYONE. At the most elite boarding schools, the list price is only HALF the operating cost per student. The earnings on endowment make up the difference. So in essence, even the wealthy kids are receiving FA.</p>
<p>Colleges and universities should charge everyone the same amount, period. By eliminating financial aid grants, retaining only loans and work-study, the sticker price could be lowered for everybody while maintaining revenue neutrality. Elite schools could fill all their slots at full price and would not be as competitive for admission. Public schools would retain students lost to the private elites due to financial aid grants, and become much more diverse. It is long past time to ditch the need-blind admissions policies, which are mythical anyway. Nobody is entitled to a free-ride Ivy League education any more than he is entitled to a free-ride Rolls-Royce as a first car. The world simply doesn’t work that way. A Hyundai will get you where you want to go just as quickly.</p>
<p>@Alma, better not let the Hyundai-driving, unwashed masses into the country club…</p>
<p>A country club membership is a privilege, not an entitlement. Education beyond high school is a privilege as well. This is reality.</p>
<p>GMT- actually your premise is somewhat not correct when you say that everyone receives a subsidy from the endowment. That’s not quite so. The “gap” between tuition and the actual cost of sending a kid to private school generally comes from dividing the operating cost by the number of students. That is the actual cost of tuition. Then a school adds a number of kids on FA and recalculates the cost. Thus the “gap”. That gap is then covered by either the annual fund donation or a combination of annual fund plus endowment. So when beliav… Says s/he doesn’t want an additional income tax imposed, thats what s/he is referring to. this is in response to the “how that affects you” question you posed.
in terms of donations vs imposed higher fees- the writer is associated with a school whose students come from families that do not traditionally send kids to private schools. Which generally means that they are not used to the concept of supporting the schools on a regular sustainable basis. Which is probably why Mr. Asen laments thus. I think it’s periwinkle that brought up the point of schools checking the actions of the attendees’ parents in the communities vis a vis charitable donations, etc. The already do. All preschools write reports to the ongoing schools and believe me, if you are a family that gets involved with the school,
it matters lots in admission.</p>
<p>mhmm, the “gap” between tuition and the actual operating cost/kid at son’s prep school is $35k per student x 600 kids = $21 million. The annual FA granted by the school is only $6 million. So, the wealthy kids are indeed being subsidized to the tune of $15 million (i.e. $21 million - $6 million).</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation, mhmm. For the record, I am male (a middle-aged father), so in the future I can be referred to as “he”.</p>
<p>As these are all private schools no one is forced to support them, attend them, send our kids to them and thereby endorse them, or have anything to do with them.</p>
<p>If you are “fed up with private schools and universities trying to effectively impose another income tax on me” stay away. If you want to send your kids to a school where the primary qualification for admittance is ability to pay, feel free. </p>
<p>The schools which are typically discussed here for the most part all choose believe, as evidenced by their operations, that it is better for the students and society as a whole if the student body reflects a broader array of backgrounds, view points, economic positions, etc. They believe that part of what makes the educational experience so rich is this broad array. If you don’t agree you are free to stay away, or try to become involved and convince others of the error of their ways. If you want a different school experience, build it.</p>
<p>As background, I have a child beginning in a week at Exeter, we are full pay, we anticipate donating the difference or more annually and planned so long before this article was written, I grew up as a child of middle income parents and attended public school and state uni. I own a business and passionately disagree with the line of thinking which culminates in “You didn’t build that” but passionately believe the old saw “to those whom much has been given, much is expected” applies to me and my family.</p>
<p>I am very surprised and taken aback by people’s hostility towards private funding of FA for needy students. I think I’ll increase this year’s gift to my kid’s prep school.</p>
<p>To all the wealthy posters who think poor people just don’t work hard enough…kids and parents
- have you ever been home sick on the day when your cleaning person was scrubbing your toilet?
- did you have to work while you were in high school? How might your grades and ECs been impacted? Would you have had time to be captain of a sports team?
- how many students is / was each college counselor helping at your school? How many hours of support did you/ your child get? The average counselor in an urban school has 300 kids and sees each one for less than an hour over 4 years for course selection and college
advising. - how much was spent on SAt prep? How many hours does that take to esrn at minimum wage?</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is hostile to private fundingfor needy kids. in my opinion it should only be so, not government funding for private schools. As someone who has paid for three tuitions for my children from preschool on to private day and in one case boarding, and onto college now, I understand very well the need for donating to the annual fund and other campaigns. As someone who went to one of these schools on a very generous scholarship, I will always be grateful to the trustees who had the vision to fund kids whose parents did not have the wherewithal to pay for private school. The biggest issue I have with the current system, and here I speak primarily to the NY day schools, as does the writer of the article, is the lack of diversity in these schools. When I attended, the parent body was very diverse – we had Wall St Titans, local restaurant owners, run of the mill journalists, Secretaries, nurses, lawyers who were partners in venerated firms and lawyers who worked for legal aid. Curntly look at a makeup of any given top notch NY school – most parents are bankers, or on deep FA, with a token middle class parent. The later is the population that is suffering in the schools, as they are too well off for FA, but can’t afford so many extras that kids enjoy in the schools either because their parents can pay or because it’s provided for them for free by the school(prom clothes, sat private tutoring, theater tickets, textbooks, spring break trips, etc). I am assuming that this two tier wealth system is precisely what the writer of the article laments, but isnt very clear about it, and I agree, I just don’t agree to the solution of means based admission. I can envisage so many pitfalls and issues with it.<br>
BTW, the gap in day schools is primarily due to the FA and not operational costs, which is ok by me, just don’t say everyone in the school is subsidized. Rather it’s an institutional decision based on the wish for a certain type of diversity.</p>
<p>Beautiful post kidsparent. My prep school scholarship children, recent graduates, have already begun donating to the Annual Fund, and I expect them to continue that through their lifetimes. I hope your child has a great first year at Exeter!</p>
<p>Wow - just wow. I had to stop reading the thread for a while to decompress and dissipate some my ire - so pardon if I get some of the facts of this discussion wrong.</p>
<p>The vast majority of families receiving financial aid are working to their capacity. Schools do look at parent income and motivation when deciding who to grant funds to. </p>
<p>It is not desirable to fill a school with only the wealthiest students - that’s not the “charter” of most boarding schools. If you want that - there are plenty to choose from - I believe Le Rosey, for instance, runs $125,000 Swiss per anum and your child gets maid service and an embroidered dinner napkin.</p>
<p>BTW - not everyone can be a high income earner - the economy doesn’t work that way. And since I know several families whose adults are working multiple jobs - one can honestly say they are “hard working.” Those families - like my own when I was a child - were looking to break the “cycle” by exposing their children to a different environment. And in this economy there just aren’t enough jobs, people are losing their homes, and it’s cruel to suggest that their “failure” is not starting a Fortune 500 company - or better, becoming a venture capitalist. (…Duh - why didn’t they think of that? Just make more money!- it’s so simple!)</p>
<p>Students who receive financial aid often “return” the school’s investment by becoming donors throughout their adult lives. Their parents (and grandparents) may become donors as well. So the idea that a more wealthy family is “subsidizing” someone else for the long term, seems off base especially if that wealthy family is being subsidized by annual donor dollars contributed by alumni who aren’t enjoying the same economic success.</p>
<p>I was a scholarship kid - my parents worked multiple jobs and despite having degrees still battled for equality in the early civil right and women’s rights eras. So “working” harder wasn’t an issue. To make that sort of elitist comment smacks of a recent politician saying that we should all “ask our fathers” for a loan to start a business. However - fast forward - I have one in college, and one in BS and we pay tuition to both because we are better off economically than my parents were. I donate in addition to tuition. I know of a colleague who really stretches to pay the $50,000 tab and has no extra to give beyond a modest contribution, another who could pay double the tuition, and one who suffered a setback and needed full FA. Who is to say one family’s child is more worthy than another? Or one parent works harder?</p>
<p>Thank you for joining the discussion, ExieMITalum.</p>
<p>As this discussion is one of the featured discussions on CC, I think some of the posters are thinking of colleges, not prep schools, when they write, “school.” The original opinion piece concerned prep schools, not colleges. </p>
<p>In endowed prep schools, much of the financial aid comes from income from funds in the school’s endowment. The funds are often restricted to that use, by agreement between donor and school. Thus, decreasing the funds spent in any year for financial aid (theoretically) would increase the endowment, but wouldn’t increase the funds available to run the school, or to decrease tuition.</p>
<p>I looked up the Manhattan Country School’s means based admission worksheet. <a href=“http://www.manhattancountryschool.org/sites/manhattancountryschool.org/files/admissions_ffw_copy_0.pdf[/url]”>http://www.manhattancountryschool.org/sites/manhattancountryschool.org/files/admissions_ffw_copy_0.pdf</a> It’s a different approach to tuition, but it does set an upper bound on tuition which seems in line with what the New York Times has recently reported as the going rate for private school in the city. I don’t know what would happen under that model if the tuition were radically more than competing schools’ tuition.</p>
<p>@mhmm, I attended a good suburban public school. The same stratification you note in NYC private schools has occurred in that system. I had classmates whose parents were doctors, lawyers, firemen, nurses, salesmen, and mailmen. Now, I think the parents are doctors, lawyers, and finance types. Access to the excellent public school systems isn’t “free.” Many people who bought houses in good suburban districts just before the crash can attest to the combined burden of 1) high house prices, 2) high property taxes, and 3) high mortgage debt. </p>
<p>We can afford to pay tuition, and donate to schools today. We, our parents, and grandparents, are grateful people supported public and private schools before we were born.</p>
<p>bxvillemom wrote, "To all the wealthy posters who think poor people just don’t work hard enough…kids and parents
- have you ever been home sick on the day when your cleaning person was scrubbing your toilet?"</p>
<p>I don’t have a cleaning lady.</p>
<p>“2) did you have to work while you were in high school? How might your grades and ECs been impacted? Would you have had time to be captain of a sports team?”</p>
<p>No. The teen labor participation rate is only 34.3% according to [The</a> Amazing Collapse Of The Working Teen - Business Insider](<a href=“http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-01-09/markets/29974355_1_teen-participation-teen-unemployment-participation-rate]The”>http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-01-09/markets/29974355_1_teen-participation-teen-unemployment-participation-rate) , so lots of non-rich teens are not working either.</p>
<p>“3) how many students is / was each college counselor helping at your school? How many hours of support did you/ your child get? The average counselor in an urban school has 300 kids and sees each one for less than an hour over 4 years for course selection and college advising.”</p>
<p>I don’t remember my guidance counselor giving me much advice. Today information is easily available on the web, including sites such as College Confidential. I admit that my children will be better prepared to apply for college than first-generation college students, because their parents know the ropes. </p>
<p>“4) how much was spent on SAt prep? How many hours does that take to esrn at minimum wage?”</p>
<p>I spent little time on SAT prep in the late 1980s and scored 1560, using just the official SAT practice book. It’s a myth that test prep raises scores a lot or that high-SES children outscore low-SES ones because of test prep. There is a similar gap between the two groups on low stakes tests such as the NAEP, that no one prepares for. See the essay “Why Chris Hayes Fails” by the blogger Education Realist
[Why</a> Chris Hayes Fails educationrealist](<a href=“http://educationrealist.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2012/06/19/why-chris-hayes-fails/]Why”>Why Chris Hayes Fails | educationrealist) .</p>
<p>Lots of poor children live in female-headed households where the father is absent and contributes nothing. My children are “privileged” (a term I dislike) because my wife and I completed our educations, got married, and started our careers before we had them.</p>
<p>Periwinkle wrote, </p>
<p>‘As this discussion is one of the featured discussions on CC, I think some of the posters are thinking of colleges, not prep schools, when they write, “school.” The original opinion piece concerned prep schools, not colleges.’</p>
<p>I am aware of the difference. One reason I object to heavy price discrimination in private school tuition is that the same “wealthy” parents are also going to be on the hook for full tuition at the elite private colleges, which also price discriminate.</p>