I fall into the income bracket you are describing. Now multiply that by two - for twins. That’s asking for a LARGE quantity of $$$$ per year…
If I’d known I would be accepted to 9th grade anyway, I would’ve applied everywhere as a 9th grader. It might be easier to get in for 10th, but it’s harder to get FA.
My math works through a tad different. It seems that Exeter has over 1,000 students. Unless you assume they go cold turkey, and refuse financial aid to all but new Preps, I would use that number in my calculations. At least include new upperclassmen, as well, even if you neglect returning students! Using 1,000 students, 13% would be 130 students.
So $50k for 130 students is $6.5M. Using the $7.9M number cited above leaves $1.4M for the other students on aid. There would be another 33.3% of the students on partial aid, or about 333 students (although Exeter claims “fewer than 300” on their website). $1.4M for 333 students comes to about $4,200 per student. Checking, $7.9M over 463 students averages to $17K per student on aid, less than the $41.5 that Exeter cites. I saw that in 2011 Exeter gave out $15.853M in financial aid, or twice the cited $7.9M.
http://www.exeter.edu/exeter_bulletin/12984_14541.aspx
Somewhere in all of these numbers lies the truth. If we say 433 students received an average of $41.5K, that works out to $17.8M in financial aid, which is more believable. Subtracting $6.5M for those on Full aid gives $12.3M for ~300 students, or about $41K (82%) on average for each of the partial aid recipients.
So, @Heartburner used very different numbers than I did, but ultimately arrived at a similar result: ~$10K residual COA for “partial scholarship” recipients.
If you leave out tuition remission (e.g. faculty kids) students and day students, Exeter claims from its website:
@ItsJustSchool - The $7.9M figure is for this years admission cycle. According to the annual financial report: "In 2013-14, our Financial Aid program awarded over $19.5 million in funds so that we can provide financial aid to 47% of our student body.
Here is the full report: http://www.exeter.edu/documents/Financial_Report_2013-14.pdf
You will notice that total revenue for tuition was about $29 Million and total increase in assets (including tuition revenue) was about $104 Million. This means that Exeter could offer free tuition to every student and would still make around $75 Million. For comparison, Choate made $43 Million with tuition revenue.
(Reference: https://www.choate.edu/uploaded/images/About/ChoateFinancialStatements2013.pdf)
So, Exeter could provide free tuition to every one of its students and would still have their endowment increase in value to a greater extent than other boarding schools.
I think Exeter should work towards eliminating financial aid and simply offer free tuition for every student. This would be a truly distinguishing aspect of the school. They could offer a “suggested donation” that wealthier families would happily contribute to with tax advantages.
@heartburner: Free tuition for all Exeter accepted students would be a DREAM, but I can only imagine the multitudes upon multitudes of middle schoolers who would be flocking to apply! The competition would definitely be very steep.
I am not sure what the purpose of having a $1.2 Billion endowment is if you are running the school budget exactly like ones that have an endowment that is less than 1/2 this. What are they doing with all this money? Faculty salaries should be higher and tuition should be significantly lower compared to these schools. In addition to free tuition, Exeter (and probably Andover) could afford to give students a $10,000 stipend for travel, books, computers, and clothing. The amount of money given by alumni (who benefited from this generosity and were grateful for the opportunity) would be more than the tuition revenue in the long run.
In all seriousness, there must be some point at which tuition contributes so little to the operating budget, that perhaps the only purpose for charging it is to provide an incentive for students to value their education.
^This argument has been levied towards Harvard for some time. In fact, there was a period about a decade ago when Congress was questioning why schools should keep their non-profit (aka tax-free) status when they are moneymaking enterprises. It was about this time that these schools started “financial aid initiatives” and started offering free COA to families below a certain income threshold.
Bookmarking an old thread…
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1155629-some-advice-for-next-years-applicants-p1.html
Referencing post #43 (@heartburner), this is still puzzling to me. The $7.9M implies that PEA is either significantly ramping up their financial aid (doubtful), or that FA falls off for upperclassmen (also doubtful). Since $7.9M is such a large proportion of the total FA of $19.5M for the year, I scratch my head over trying to reconcile this.
http://www.exeter.edu/news_and_events/news_events_17556.aspx :
The other discomfiting statistic that is contained in the linked annual report is the steady decline in applications over that last 5 years amounting to over a 25% reduction from 3205 in 2009-10 to 2866 in 2013-14 to 2340 in 2014-15 (see quote above). Something is very inconsistent (or at least surprising) about these data.
I noticed the discrepancy in data reported for number of applications. I think that there is a difference between completed applications and total applications (reported to the board).
With regard to the 7.9 million in aid for the 307 spots. The $19.5M is the total for enrolled students over all 4 years but the $7.9M is what was awarded to preps through seniors. Not sure about PGs. So it is not $7.9 times 4 years. Also, this is what is offerred. It is possible that some people offered FA decline it and go somewhere else.
It is also possible that Exeter is being more generous this year compared to prior years.
Yes, those are possible explanations. Still, it seems like a drop in applicants over the 4 years reported to the Board from 3205 applicants in an economically unstable time to 2866 applicants last cycle when many BSs were reporting record-breaking numbers of applicants. I am sure there is self-selection involved to some degree.
And if $7.9M is for 307 spots, there are about 1100 total spots, so that would represent a huge increase this year in FA. I think, though, that there are ~460 offers out, so that would better correlate if some of those offered FA chose to go elsewhere and the $7.9M offered is more or less randomly dispersed over those who matriculate and those who do not.