Percentage of Students on Financial Aid at Major Privates is Depressing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What other schools?

milton academy: nearly 60%
roxbury latin: 40%
philips andover: 45%
philips exeter: 50%

many could do better. but still, would like to see the DC schools step it up.

Would you REALLY like to see more diversity in terms of socioeconomic at your private school? And the significant needs that many lower socioeconomic students come to school with? Probably not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every child has access to free public K-12, so complaining about not having enough financial aid at elite private schools, when you look at the actual numbers, is maybe a bit silly.

It’s not so silly when these same privates boast about how many get FA and how diverse they are. They are not diverse and you can count the number of actual poor kids on the fingers of one hand. The $300k family getting aid mentioned above is not an anomaly. FA at these schools is a joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every child has access to free public K-12, so complaining about not having enough financial aid at elite private schools, when you look at the actual numbers, is maybe a bit silly.

It’s not so silly when these same privates boast about how many get FA and how diverse they are. They are not diverse and you can count the number of actual poor kids on the fingers of one hand. The $300k family getting aid mentioned above is not an anomaly. FA at these schools is a joke.

If colleges who claim to care about diversity, wanted to put their money where their mouth is, they could just stop accepting kids from these schools until they actually became divers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every child has access to free public K-12, so complaining about not having enough financial aid at elite private schools, when you look at the actual numbers, is maybe a bit silly.

It’s not so silly when these same privates boast about how many get FA and how diverse they are. They are not diverse and you can count the number of actual poor kids on the fingers of one hand. The $300k family getting aid mentioned above is not an anomaly. FA at these schools is a joke.

First, if you look at the $ amount of financial aid given each year, it is in the many millions and is largely funded by massive philanthropy efforts.

Second, you are defining diversity as socioeconomic which is actually very expensive to obtain on the low end.

The kind of diversity that many parents are interested in is very different. Think more racial, cultural, sports talents, artistic interests, hobbies, languages, countries, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every child has access to free public K-12, so complaining about not having enough financial aid at elite private schools, when you look at the actual numbers, is maybe a bit silly.

It’s not so silly when these same privates boast about how many get FA and how diverse they are. They are not diverse and you can count the number of actual poor kids on the fingers of one hand. The $300k family getting aid mentioned above is not an anomaly. FA at these schools is a joke.

If colleges who claim to care about diversity, wanted to put their money where their mouth is, they could just stop accepting kids from these schools until they actually became divers

Or the schools could just walk all their talk and do it.

What’s stopping you?

[Anonymous]

It is presumptuous to assume there is a correct number for financial aid at these schools. Maybe it is completely unnecessary. However it exists and it represents large scale philanthropy.

[Anonymous]

These schools will never have real financial diversity until they stop requiring parent essays & interviews.

[Anonymous]

Don’t they have to give some financial aid to maintain nonprofit status?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These schools will never have real financial diversity until they stop requiring parent essays & interviews.

They never will until they make it possible for actual poor kids to afford to attend. But the families really don’t want that despite what the DEI statement on the website says.

And the families snicker at the less expensive private schools that actually make it possible to have much greater economic diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Potomac School 21%
Bullis 34%
St. Andrew's 1 in 4
Holton 25%
Landon 28%
Georgetown Prep 28%

Potomac is being stingy with it

[Anonymous]

If you attend a public school, get a group of parents together and ask them how you can recruit more poor families to send children into your schools.

Increasing socioeconomic diversity at the low end in public schools is not going to be popular.

The public school systems function by separating families into wealthy districts and poor districts by home prices, creating high performing and low performing schools. The idea that public schools have more socioeconomic diversity than privates is highly questionable.

Fixating on private schools is suspicious when this problem of socioeconomic diversity is perhaps much more urgent in the public school systems.

[Anonymous]

Where are you going to find these poor kids who can do the work at a Big3?

Andover and Exeter take applicant nationally and internationally. Sidwell and NCS are stuck with the DMV.

My kids came from DCPS to two different Big3 schools in 9th. They attended the best DCPS elementary/middle schools and scored 99% on the PARCC (achievement tests). They're the product of two parents with graduate degrees.
They had every advantage that such kids have: top early childhood education (private preschool), parental help all along the way from PK-->8th grade, a house full of books, private tutors if/when needed, international travel, exposure to different cultures through family friends, nanny, etc.
AND STILL---9th grade at the Big3 coming out of DCPS was ROUGTH. They had to repeat a grade in math and start over in foreign language (they were put in Spanish 101 despite having 3 years of Spanish in DCPS). They learned annotate for the first time, they finally learned to write well.

They got through it with a LOT of parental involvement, tutors, teacher office hours, etc.

Now what happens to the kid who attends many of the myriad of DC public schools where only 5% of the kids are at grade level? Kids who have none of the resources that my kids did?

It's not as easy as just giving a poor kid a free ride to Sidwell. It's really hard to find these kids who come from true poverty and will be able to hack the academics and culture at these elite schools with little (or no) support at home.

[Anonymous]

The boarding schools are in a different category. I wouldn't compare those with day private schools.

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to figure out there OP's complaint. Is the complaint that local DMV schools don't have bigger endowments to fund more aid? Or that they, specifically, did not receive the aid they hoped for?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where are you going to find these poor kids who can do the work at a Big3?

Andover and Exeter take applicant nationally and internationally. Sidwell and NCS are stuck with the DMV.

My kids came from DCPS to two different Big3 schools in 9th. They attended the best DCPS elementary/middle schools and scored 99% on the PARCC (achievement tests). They're the product of two parents with graduate degrees.
They had every advantage that such kids have: top early childhood education (private preschool), parental help all along the way from PK-->8th grade, a house full of books, private tutors if/when needed, international travel, exposure to different cultures through family friends, nanny, etc.
AND STILL---9th grade at the Big3 coming out of DCPS was ROUGTH. They had to repeat a grade in math and start over in foreign language (they were put in Spanish 101 despite having 3 years of Spanish in DCPS). They learned annotate for the first time, they finally learned to write well.

They got through it with a LOT of parental involvement, tutors, teacher office hours, etc.

Now what happens to the kid who attends many of the myriad of DC public schools where only 5% of the kids are at grade level? Kids who have none of the resources that my kids did?

It's not as easy as just giving a poor kid a free ride to Sidwell. It's really hard to find these kids who come from true poverty and will be able to hack the academics and culture at these elite schools with little (or no) support at home.

There is a nonprofit called Prep For Prep in NYC that matches low-income URMs with elite NYC privates starting in middle school. The program has a rigorous training component that the kids must commit to, and NYC is huge with robust public transportation, however.