Liklihood/Amount of Financial Aid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Based on the comments here and the forum in general, many posters don't understand the purpose of Financial Aid or how it is administered by the schools.

FA is an enrollment tool that helps the school fill its classes especially with students it wants.

In its Financial budget for the year, the school allocates a fixed amount for Aid. Once that is allocated, there isn't any more money.

The average award is 50% of tuition which means that half of the FA awards are for less than 50%. Very large awards are extremely rare because they absorb such a large percentage of the FA budget.

If at this late date there is money left in the FA budget and the school wants the student badly enough --- for whatever reason --- then there's a possibility.

If there isn't any it won't matter how good the story is or acute the need of the applicant.

Another poster tried to get at this, but I appreciate you saying it directly.

OP - Most schools think they offer something better than a public school. They may or may not be right, depending on the public school and the specific kid, but that's the shared understanding.

So, they would assume there are hundreds of thousands of kids like yours who *could* attend their school. Why would they subsidize your kid in particular? Some schools will subsidize because your kid belongs to the same faith community, preferably one where you've been tithing for years. Or because your child is extraordinarily gifted in some way that will benefit them. Will your child raise the schools statistics in some way? Will they offer a unique perspective in the classroom? Do well on college admissions? Help them win a sportball trophy?

What does your child bring?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on the comments here and the forum in general, many posters don't understand the purpose of Financial Aid or how it is administered by the schools.

FA is an enrollment tool that helps the school fill its classes especially with students it wants.

In its Financial budget for the year, the school allocates a fixed amount for Aid. Once that is allocated, there isn't any more money.

The average award is 50% of tuition which means that half of the FA awards are for less than 50%. Very large awards are extremely rare because they absorb such a large percentage of the FA budget.

If at this late date there is money left in the FA budget and the school wants the student badly enough --- for whatever reason --- then there's a possibility.

If there isn't any it won't matter how good the story is or acute the need of the applicant.

Another poster tried to get at this, but I appreciate you saying it directly.

OP - Most schools think they offer something better than a public school. They may or may not be right, depending on the public school and the specific kid, but that's the shared understanding.

So, they would assume there are hundreds of thousands of kids like yours who *could* attend their school. Why would they subsidize your kid in particular? Some schools will subsidize because your kid belongs to the same faith community, preferably one where you've been tithing for years. Or because your child is extraordinarily gifted in some way that will benefit them. Will your child raise the schools statistics in some way? Will they offer a unique perspective in the classroom? Do well on college admissions? Help them win a sportball trophy?

What does your child bring?

Sidwell for example bills itself as one of the most generous privates around with financial aid. 23 percent of its students get aid which averages 37k. Translation? 77 percent of its students pay 60k and 23 percent pay 23k. We are talking RICH kids. Almost exclusively rich kids. For every one of them, there are 50 or 100 others who are just as smart, just as talented, and just as loved -- just not as rich. It's like that at all privates. Fortunately you don't need that. The cream of the poor crop will rise to the top as well, just without their parents paying for it.

[Anonymous]

I think there are very few kids who get much more than 50% aid. You might get more if your kid brings something truly unique and noteworthy to the school. But that's very rare. See if the school you are interested in publishes any averages to give you a sense of what the typical award is. At our school around 25% get aid and I've heard the average award is also around 25-30%.

[Anonymous]

No matter what anyone says, you won't know until you apply. Based on our FA need, we did not anticipate having a choice of schools for our child. We were fortunate to get significant aid offered at three schools, which brought the tuition to the amount we were willing to spend. For most schools our FA was about 60% of tuition and two of three brought tuition down to exactly what we told them we were willing to pay. Our HHI was likely slightly higher than yours when we applied. I would suggest applying, but have a plan in place in case you do not get any aid. You just don't know what competition will look like when you are applying.