<p>One good thing coming out of my D applying for BS is that for the 1st time, i finally did a financial review as we have been too busy working pay check to pay check.</p>
<p>My D has applied for FA, and we can afford about a half if everything pans out, and we decide to cut ourselves to the bones.</p>
<p>We haven't started saving for college yet. With two kids in toll, I think i would need to save about half a million in 12 years,which is about stocking away $3000 per month starting from now.</p>
<p>So clearly i don't have enough dough to do both. hmmm ... wondering just how everybody else deals with this.</p>
<p>I saw discussions that BS would actually hurt the chance to get college scholarships. So by committing most resources to BS, have i set myself for the eventual financial train wreck? It seems more prudent to have my kids staying PS, so we can be sure the money will be saved by the time they go to college. I believe they can get to a top college BS or PS.</p>
<p>Am i wrong in my thinking? When BS figures demonstrated needs, do they consider the need to save for college? if not, how good is it to see the kid going BS but ending up going to a community college due to lack of college funding?</p>
<p>The idea that bs hurts the chances of getting college scholarships is just not true. I have heard that some believe that bs hurts the kids chances for the Ivy League Schools. That too I believe to be untrue.</p>
<p>I think each family must decide what they feel the purpose of bs is. Our decision to consider the bs option was to give her the high school experience she needs. I believe this experience will prepare her better for LIFE, regardless of what her college experiences amount to. </p>
<p>We look at bs as in and of itself the road to develop a young mind that will find learning a worthwhile commitment and reward. My intent was to steer my child into understanding others. To gain a sense of self worth and growth to give her the skills to be a contributing member of society. Really to be of service to the world in which is lives.</p>
<p>My d knows that without a great deal of scholarship money she will return to our city and attend community college, which we be free, and then finish an undergrad degree at a state school and/or be prepared for loans (which I would surely pay the majority of).</p>
<p>We, my d and I, live in the real world. As a college instructor, my take home pay is less than most schools tuition, bs or top colleges. </p>
<p>Do I wish I had more money, saved more, made different choices, sure. But I live with the decisions I made and when I look at my d, I know I made the right decisions for her.</p>
<p>I think that the idea of BS hurting chances for scholarships stems from the situation that it is harder to get merit scholarships coming out of a BS than a LP. A lot of merit scholarships are based on stats, and a regular above average student at a BS is hard pressed to come up with those stats. Im referring to weighted gpa, being ranked top of the class, national merit based on psat (student is measured against the boarding school population rather than their entire state), etc. Since your fellow students start out being fairly homogeneous in terms of grades/scores, its much harder to be a standout academically, thus harder to gain those scholarships. There are other merit scholarships, such as various presidential scholars programs that offer full ride, plus plus, or some that offer as much as half of the fee. Of course the competition for those is huge.</p>
<p>Most can’t afford either one, just look at all the posts regarding FA. That’s like saying how do people afford a mansion and a vacation home. Answer, make more money.</p>
<p>I kind of agree in principle that bs is going to hurt the chance for merit-based scholarships, and the chance to a top-tier college, simply because as many people already pointed out:</p>
<ul>
<li>a lot harder to get a off the-the-chart gpa in bs, because the bar is just so much higher</li>
<li>class ranking is going to be an issue for most in bs. In the end, it is a pyramid scheme after all … no matter how elite the bs is, majority of folks will have to end up in the bottom</li>
<li>a top bs sends about 1/3 of its class to top colleges, which makes the bottom 2/3 wondering where they would have gone had they stayed lps. I read admitted Andover kids ranking on average top 1%</li>
</ul>
<p>Knowing what we now know, or what we think we know, when it comes to $$$ matters, every family’s situation is different. Since most people fall in the middle where i am, i cannot help but counting my odds and options:
to get a full ride in bs even with an income not far under obama’s radar?
commit most resources on bs and hope kids will go to only harvard/yale where parents will only have to pay about 10% of their income?
let kids go bs, then to a state college or even community college for lack of funds?
let kids stay lps for now so we can afford any top colleges they would be able to go later?
quit job in several years, or do it involuntarily in this “capitalist global economy” so that we after all can qualify for “need-based” aid?
keep up the hard work and hope to become instant rich just in time?
take out a huge loan to pay for everything and mortgage up rest of my life? </p>
<p>So many options but few good choices. In all sincerity, i believe this dilemma exists for a lot of families thus the reason for my original post.</p>
<p>The top five percent in middle/high schools of a wide range is not a sure indicator for an ivy admittance, which I think is reasonable. On the other hand, if you expand the <em>acceptable</em> list of colleges to include more than ivies and the most selective, then up to 80% of their graduates attend one of the top 50 universities (US News) and top 30 LACs, according to [Boarding</a> School Stats : Matriculation Stats](<a href=“matriculationstats.org”>matriculationstats.org). </p>
<p>I think - If you are serious about BS, maybe a hybrid of a few solutions you have come up with is the answer - some FA from the school (not full ride), some loans, and working hard and saving, which we are all already doing.</p>
<p>The bs that I researched dont rank students, so that information cant be used against the student. A student that is #3 at the local high school will not out score a really got bs student, even if that student is in the bottom half of the bs class.</p>
<p>If your lps is a joke, then leaving a kid there will only hurt their chances of a top school because even if they make the grades, they wont have the knowledge. </p>
<p>It seems like so many people focus on the Ivys +MIT+Standford (just like so many focus on Hades). There have to be at least 50 top schools that give an excellent education and have funds.</p>
<p>Before my d went to bs I was not aware of schools like Amherst and Williams. Now both are on our radar as small LAC that seem to be the natural progression of schools that are similar to the bs and environment my d selected and is thriving in. Most people in the midwest have not heard of LAC’s and have no clue to the education they provide.</p>
No, a top boarding school sends the top 1/3 of its class to the Ivy League, not to top colleges. There are other top colleges besides the Ivy League.</p>
<p>You must be living in a dreamland or BS Bubble. There are many PHS like TJ where the SAT average is higher than either A or E.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is a stretch. A lot of people from the midwest attend BS and LACs. What clues do you have about LACs that others don’t? Do you think you could get a good education at the University of Chicago or the University of Illinois? or do you think LACs are the only cure all? Diversity of thought indicates that there will be people enamored by HYPMS just as you are by LACs.</p>
<p>There are great LACs in the midwest: Carleton, Grinnell, Macalaster, Kenyon, Oberlin to name a few. I would guess that those in the know are well versed on the quality of a LAC education, even in the midwest.</p>
<p>I only used 1/3 as a ballpark number. Whatever the real number may be for each school, what i was trying to say was lots of bs kids end up in less than stellar schools than maybe what might be possible had they stayed in their lps.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, i don’t want my d going to bs just so that she can go to an ivy or whatever which she can mostly do simply by staying lps. We are really interested in many “other things”, which seem coming with too stiff a price tag that i feel we are not that ready yet.</p>
<p>As DAndrew put it correctly, we may be able to pull through by using a hybrid of sorts. Yet i still need to ask and figure out “should we? and why?”</p>
<p>I think it is dangerous to define successful college placement by looking at only a handful of schools. Every year, I see boarding school students who don’t even apply to the Ivys because they prefer other schools for various reasons. Not everyone bows to the Ivy gods and many realize they can get a better academic education at some other schools or choose schools based on sports programs, etc.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that top or great boarding schools send more than 1/3 of their graduates to “top” colleges. I mean, if Andover sends aprox. 1/3 of its graduates to the Ivy League, the other 2.3 probably go some place pretty nice.</p>
<p>It’s the student, not the school. The student should be in the environment where s/he’ll thrive the best and shine as brightly as possible. For some, that could be BS for a variety of reasons, like the attention, the teachers not having to cater to the lowest student (or at least having very capable “lowest students” to cater to), the athletic opportunities, the confidence and maturing process that comes from living away from home…or whatever makes your kid tick. And for others, it could be a small private (non-boarding) school because the piano instructor you’d part ways with is just too excellent, or maybe it’s a huge magnet school your kid takes the bus to because your kid thrives in your local school’s setting already, the marching band is “da bizness,” etc., etc.</p>
<p>The debate about which option is best – as if it is carried out in some kind of vacuum where kids are cut from the same cloth and the inputs (children) are fungible – is just too ridiculous (if I may use that word) for words.</p>
<p>Most – and close to all – boarding school students are there as part of some intentional decision, so the odds that there will be a higher percentage of them in the right place is just common sense. Some – but well short of all – public school students are there because of a conscious choice that that’s the best environment for the child. In a perfect world, where every child benefits from these choices and, better still, all the choices are wise ones made in the child’s best interest, there would be lots of amazing things happening in public and private schools.</p>
<p>Make a choice that gives each of your kids the best shot at being the best version of themselves that they can be in 3, 4 or 5 years and don’t worry about what’s best for some fungible, uni-kid who is not your child that people keep debating about. For my kids, under my one roof, I think those are very different environments. Seeing how different my own kids are, I have no idea how anyone can opine as to what type of school is generally best for hundreds of kids.</p>
There are many PHS like TJ where the SAT average is higher than either A or E.</p>