Financial aid "dried up"

[Anonymous]

I think OP intends for this thread to be read by admissions folks at Holton. What better plug for her daughter. Not a negative, or even mediocre, comment on her daughter. A well-written description of Holton as her engineering daughter's self-identified first choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Moving is easier said than done when you own a house. Nothing is selling in our neighborhood right now - well, that's not completely true, there was a foreclosure that sold a couple of months ago. We do not have the resources to buy another house until our current house sells - which then makes a change of school completely contingent on a conventional sale in the housing market, which right now is terrible. It also adds the extra expense of needing a second car plus the insurance and gas money that would entail, I would assume a higher mortgage/rent since comparable houses in MoCo (at least when we were looking a couple of years ago) cost much more than we currently pay on our mortgage. Not to mention child care expenses we would incur (of which we have none right now due to the close proximity to both of our works allowing DH and I to juggle schedules). Also, the commute for DD is time spent with family - maybe that sounds stupid, but I did a 45 minute commute to school K-12 and loved that time I spent singing in the car with my mom and brother. We send her to a magnet she will bus there (I don't know how long a ride that would be) and lose a good hour+ of time with me and my husband individually due to us being in cars solo making commutes.

We live frugally and well within our means where we are now. I appreciate the pitch for MoCo public schools, but sometimes people on this forum make it sound like you can change houses as easily as you change underwear. Maybe that is true for some people, but I also have to think those people must be much more well off than us. We've crunched the numbers on a move vs. private school, and with the market as it is right now it doesn't add up for us (it would add more expenses than we have budgeted for a private school, not to mention the stress of moving) so we're trying to work with the options we have.

The additional factor is she is pushing very hard for single-sex education and as an educator I feel there is a lot of value in single-sex education for girls, so I'm happy to support that if we can make it work.

Re: post about "deep pockets" - the school we were told had no FA is a big 3 school, which I assumed = deep pockets. Is that inaccurate? Or rather, can you give us some



schools that you would consider to have deep pockets as far as aid is concerned?

Ummm . I am thinking of a school that just about every parent in DC who has applied to private has sent their $60 check to and waited in a pack of hundreds to see on an open house knowing that they only had 24 spots for pre-K. I am thinking o a school that is building in a recession. I am thinking of a school that is used to the insanity in applications that only having the children of two sitting US Presidents in back to back decades can create.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, Sidwell has some really rich families who donate a lot. We know some of them in person (we're not in that lucky group ourselves).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For what its worth, FA usually means a discount of 25% to 50%, at best. So, if you make 80K( before taxes) a year and your kid's Tuition is 30K, that means in order to pay $1,500 a month in Tuition or $2,000 a month in tuition you do work two or three jobs because you must also pay: rent,health insurance, utilities and food for two people on the 30K a year that is left. Think about someone willing to live on $2,500 a month for rent, utilities ,food,and health insurance for the 14 years of Pre-K through 12 and imagine their child is the top of his/her class. Do you really resent their 50% discount on tuition?

This hypothetical person doesn't have enough money to pay for a $30k school. If this person wants a Ferrari, should we give her a discount on that as well? Private school is a luxury, not some sort of entitlement.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm a verbose writer but seriously you might want to think about these long essays you are writing here. Why do you feel the need to give so much information and justify how compelling your daughter's case is to a group of anonymous strangers who have no say whatsoever in your daughter's admission or FA package? It's kind of odd, and my guess is that you're fueling some of the backlash here either deliberately or unwittingly. The bottom line is that no one here can tell you with any real accuracy what the FA picture is at all area privates, and probalby no one except the administrators and faculty have a good idea of what the prospects are at any individual school. Ask the schools you're applying to if you want reliable info. Then either apply or don't apply, if you apply warn your kid it may not be financially possible, and stop trying to convince every DCUM to canonize your 7yo, it's a little tiresome.

[Anonymous]

OP, just go it. These bee-atches can not predict next year's enrollment or FA situation for every school. Just try a handful of schools and see what happens. Also try some public options (magnets and so forth). You should also try DCPS magnets and charters-- tuition would be about $10,000. Some of the schools have engineering programs or will be middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the "diversity" of which you speak?

Go on a tour and see for yourself. AD's spend a great deal of time and energy striking a balance. To answer your question I would say that in DC's school there are the floowing kids of diversity: ethnic,racial,economic,sexuality,native language. A sample of five families might be: a bi-racial couple one of whom is an alum and can private pay and donate, an ethiopian child who may get some FA, a lesbian couple who are both white,but full pay, a child who comes from a diplomatic family and primarily speaks Spanish at home,Middle eastern royalty, an AA child , on and on like that, just like Washington in general.

I think that schools that talk about diversity do really need to think of it in economic terms. If they do, a number of other aspects of diversity may correlate as well. But schools need to think about how tuition has hollowed out the middle class, even the kids, say, of scientists who work for the Federal government. Not to mention kids from military families or the kids of construction workers or cleaning ladies -- their experiences and commitment to educating their kids are diversity, too. I suppose it's neat to talk about the bi-racial kids of lesbian couples, but what's so great if only finance managing directors or major law firm partners can afford the school?

[Anonymous]

What on earth does OP hope to learn in addition to what has already been posted on the first two pages of responses to this thread PLUS the responses she got to a very similar thread she started a month back.

Let me summarize. FA is still available at many schools but not at all of them. You have to call the schools you are interested in rather than ask anonymous people on a web forum. If available, FA generally covers only a portion of tuition so be prepared to pay the remaining 50 to 67 percent. A long commute will be difficult for you and your DD, especially if your child wishes to ever see her school friends or participate in sports, clubs, dances or other activities that occur outside of normal school hours. And finally, the reasons you give for being interested in private school are very common and you will be applying during a non-entry year for most area schools, so getting admitted at all may be more challenging than getting financial aid. Best wishes and please move on.

[Anonymous]

Is anyone uncomfortable with the fact that the public schools are exempt from property taxes? That basically means that these schools are subsidized by any middle and lower middle class family who pays taxes. Therefore, the construction workers, nurses, military families, etc. that can't afford the tuition are, in fact, subsidizing the school, in effect. That is a crazy world.

[Anonymous]

On a different note, are there any other parochial schools that would be about the same cost as your current school but are better about hands-on-learning and the other things you're looking for?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone uncomfortable with the fact that the public schools are exempt from property taxes? That basically means that these schools are subsidized by any middle and lower middle class family who pays taxes. Therefore, the construction workers, nurses, military families, etc. that can't afford the tuition are, in fact, subsidizing the school, in effect. That is a crazy world.

OOPS, meant PRIVATE

[Anonymous]

Who is the crazy person who continues to deride people's kids by calling them special snowflakes? Who doesn't think their kid is special? What is so bad about a mother thinking their kid is something great. Why have them if you're not going to enjoy them and look out for them. Maybe your kid lady is not special -- so don't deride others who are.

[Anonymous]

Oh dear. More class warfare on DCUM. What else is new?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the "diversity" of which you speak?

Go on a tour and see for yourself. AD's spend a great deal of time and energy striking a balance. To answer your question I would say that in DC's school there are the floowing kids of diversity: ethnic,racial,economic,sexuality,native language. A sample of five families might be: a bi-racial couple one of whom is an alum and can private pay and donate, an ethiopian child who may get some FA, a lesbian couple who are both white,but full pay, a child who comes from a diplomatic family and primarily speaks Spanish at home,Middle eastern royalty, an AA child , on and on like that, just like Washington in general.

Then I guess we're out: typical McLean Republican (full tuition paying) white man married to white woman.

actually that means you would fit the mold of the other half of the school. Every school has a mix and full pay families are needed more than ever now. It's just thatI don't think its so bad that we are going back to a solely private pay only system. I think privates probably gave that up for a better tax status years ago and can't ever go back on that.

I'm confused. So the private schools are roughly half diverse and half not and roughly half FA and half full paying? And you'd like to see schools go to all full paying but the school's tax status prevents it from doing so? Yeah, I have no idea what the point is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:... Every school has a mix and full pay families are needed more than ever now. It's just thatI don't think its so bad that we are going back to a solely private pay only system. I think privates probably gave that up for a better tax status years ago and can't ever go back on that.

I'm confused. So the private schools are roughly half diverse and half not and roughly half FA and half full paying? And you'd like to see schools go to all full paying but the school's tax status prevents it from doing so? Yeah, I have no idea what the point is.

I don't think PP's point about "trading for a better tax status" has any basis in fact. All these schools are tax exempt simply because they are non-profits under the applicable tax regs. See http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Non-profit_organizations and http://www.irs.gov/publications/p557/ch03.html . It does not matter at all how much (or how little) financial aid they choose to offer.

A few people have raised the argument many times before on DCUM that private schools should be denied tax-exempt status. I think their argument has something to do with geography -- complaining that DC private schools are admitting too many MD & VA residents. IMHO, it's a stupid argument. But if you're interested, you certainly can find a dozen or more pages of discussion about it in the DCUM archives.