What Schools are Considered 2T?
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Anonymous
I don't think $70k or $80k or even $100k is a barrier for enough families to be a problem, and frankly they can't afford to drop it by as much as you might think and still keep up the class sizes / administrative headcount / teacher quality / facilities / extracurriculars / financial aid that they care about; they'd rather lower their standards and accept dumber rich kids than move to 22 kids in a class and sack the football coach and the 7th grade DEI coordinator and end free tuition for faculty kids. There are cheaper options - parochial schools of course but also some for-profits, BASIS is in the 40's - but then you lose a lot of the differentiators that motivate families to pay for private school, and with class size expansion delayed but not canceled and the city also seemingly about to embark on a wave of new school construction, the gap will probably only grow smaller in a few years. |
Anonymous
| Just to add: the competitive pressure for TT/2T/3T private schools is much about what cool things the other schools are offering (STEM for example has been something they've been at each others' throats for for the last decade or so) than incremental tuition increases; nobody is picking Dalton over HM because it's $1k cheaper. |
Anonymous
This all makes sense. I know a lot of rich families go to these schools. It just seems that there is a price point where the kids get richer and dumber, with many dual income professional parents (doctors, attorneys who aren’t rainmakers) opting out for public school or the suburbs. Tuition cannot keep outpacing inflation forever without some change of student body composition. |
Anonymous
| Salaries go up enough that though it doesn't necessarily keep pace, it is close enough. My kid went to public elementary and middle and is in private HS. If you told me when they were starting elementary that we would be paying $70k a year for HS I would have said no way - I was struggling with paying $40k a year for elementary at the time and decided not to. Which was a great choice. But our salaries have gone up enough that we can make $70k work, especially just for HS. |
Anonymous
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It is amazing to me how much money private schools waste on various special interests. My kids play sports and I love sports but the amount wasted on them by private schools is ridiculous. They commit to having a team but might have very few kids sign up but still have to pay for it (coach, transportation, sometimes facilities).
Similarly, there is lots of administrative bureaucracy that really is not necessary. But it makes some kids and families feel special. So they can't cut it. Schools could also cut back on financial aid and it likely would not be really noticed. There is much less disclosed about this than for colleges. Easy way to save some money. Some schools are also in much better shape facilities-wise than others. |
Anonymous
Yeah, but it’s not just HS. If you’re full pay for HS then you have to assume you’ll be full pay for college so there’s another 400k. I also don’t think you can assume in our current world that salaries will keep going up. We’re in our late 40s-50s and I’m definitely not assuming that our income will keep going up forever. |
Anonymous
A lot of it goes to faculty kids, which they can't cut without losing out on their best faculty to other schools. If they stop offering financial aid to the handful of kids from Prep4Prep or whatever they do now, it would be incredibly noticeable and create a lot of outrage and yet barely register as a blip on their costs. |
Anonymous
Fair point. It likely would be a drop in the bucket but better than nothing. I always crack up when these schools publicly pat themselves on the back about how much aid they give, when, as you noted, a big percentage of that aid is going to faculty kids. They could still trim a bit around the edges and it might help some. But you are right that most of it is targeted and serves a purpose so would be hard to cut. But better than nothing. |
Anonymous
Are Marymount, Sacred Heart , Nightingale still considered T2? Looking at their instagram pages, the college results look more T3. |
Anonymous
I would agree. Though I don't feel strongly. |
Anonymous
| Marymount and CSH are Tier 2. Nightingale is t3 |
Anonymous
Sounds like we have a Marymount parent here. Nightingale is T2 and Marymount is T3/T4. |
Anonymous
you aren't really look at the right comparison. tuition increases versus inflation isn't the right metric it's tuition increases versus senior knowledge worker income & equity market gains. a upper middle class family with $3MM in investible assets - if their equity portfolio went up 15% or about $450k. they will totally feel wealthy enough to pay the 4-6% tuition increase even if inflation is 3-4% |
Anonymous
why do you believe that Marymount is Tier 2? |
Anonymous
Nightingale has pretty solid college results. |