Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
One of the (IMO) positives of the Latin college counseling office is that they strive to help kids find the right "fit" for the right price, instead of trying to push kids into taking on large amounts of debt at high profile schools. They do a lot of counseling about which schools are "no loan" schools, and which schools offer great aid options, as well as being very on top of the DC TAG program. The college counselors also spend a lot of time educating students on potential scholarship opportunities. For parents who have $300k+ per kid socked away in 529s to cover HYP, that might not matter, but to many Latin families it does.
Grand, but dozens of schools on the list cost a bomb (around $75,000, same as "high profile" schools) for UMC families who don't qualify for fi aid, and don't offer much in the way of merit scholarships. Moreover, poor kids would do better financially at Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford etc. than at the schools on the list.
There are a lot of small private schools with high price tags which offer generous merit aid. And another aspect of Latin's College counseling program is that they offer a lot of practical counseling regarding cost considerations which are not typically covered by financial aid, e.g., transportation. They aren't going to push a kid to Stanford (e.g.) if the child's financial situation means that coming home for holidays and summer visits is effectively priced out of reach. Spending an additional $1400 to $2000/ yr in airline tickets is not insignificant. The head of the college counseling office is very sensitive to those types of aspects---frequently overlooked by the comfortable DCUM demographic.