Keep the Poor Students in Poor Schools

[Anonymous]

Are there top area privates that offer merit based aid without reference to need? We make $270k/year (2 feds) and live in a good public school district but would just not be able to rationalize private school tuition without merit based scholarships. Does anyone feel like there is a lack of diversity in that the whole "middle" class range in these private schools (in quotes because I mean middle class for dc standards, ie 2 government employees with no family wealth)? Seems like it's all the very wealthy and the very needy. Doesn't seem like a lot of range/diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are there top area privates that offer merit based aid without reference to need? We make $270k/year (2 feds) and live in a good public school district but would just not be able to rationalize private school tuition without merit based scholarships. Does anyone feel like there is a lack of diversity in that the whole "middle" class range in these private schools (in quotes because I mean middle class for dc standards, ie 2 government employees with no family wealth)? Seems like it's all the very wealthy and the very needy. Doesn't seem like a lot of range/diversity.

Yup. DC was accepted to a top 3, but we had to turn it down because we (2 feds, similar HHI) didn't see any way we could send DC and DC's younger sibling in a few years.

I'm guessing the middle class families in top area privates get a lot of parental help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there top area privates that offer merit based aid without reference to need? We make $270k/year (2 feds) and live in a good public school district but would just not be able to rationalize private school tuition without merit based scholarships. Does anyone feel like there is a lack of diversity in that the whole "middle" class range in these private schools (in quotes because I mean middle class for dc standards, ie 2 government employees with no family wealth)? Seems like it's all the very wealthy and the very needy. Doesn't seem like a lot of range/diversity.

Yup. DC was accepted to a top 3, but we had to turn it down because we (2 feds, similar HHI) didn't see any way we could send DC and DC's younger sibling in a few years.

I'm guessing the middle class families in top area privates get a lot of parental help.

At 270k a year you should be able to afford to send 2 kids to private. For you it is just a matter of priorities.

[Anonymous]

Only in DC is 270K "middle class".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Only in DC is 270K "middle class".

That is why I put it in quotes. I dont mean actual middle class, I mean Middle of the road for dc standards. Two fed government employees without family wealth is about enough to afford an ordinary house in a close in burb, middle if the road cars like subarus, etc. I realize in Kentucky we'd be living in mansions.

To the person who said we could afford it, I never said we couldn't afford it, which is why I was inquiring about non financial need based aid. Sure we could send multiple kids at $30k a pop for 13 years each but wouldn't leave much for college tuition (where I think it is more important to sound your buck) and given we live in a great public school district, we just cant rationalize it.

[Anonymous]

18:11 again. The reason I wonder is because I went to private school in California for a couple years on a merit based scholarship (my parents were upper middle class and definitely would not have qualified for need based aid). It wasnt the top school in the area academically (which I imagine is why they wanted to make offers to the high achiever applicants), but it was a better education than most of the area publics. I just wondered whether merit based aid is a thing of the past or whether there are schools that offer it here.

[Anonymous]

Most (all?) of the Catholic high schools have some form of merit scholarship. I only know that because we know kids who are recipients whereas I've never heard anyone talk about their kid getting a scholarship to GDS, but that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't scholarships at other local private schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The anger that you often see on this board is that after paying $30,000 + for our own DCs to get an education we are then asked to pay more for your children.

you need to stop, financial aid isn't government welfare

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just so you guys know, some of us lurk on this board who send our kids to public school and are just considering private school in the future. You guys sure make me want to avoid it. I'm not sure the allegedly superior education is worth it for all this anger and pettiness.

+1