FA - real life

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume you know that a) unqualified people apply, b) lots of those applications come from families needing aid, and c) many private schools aren’t all that selective.

Do you have evidence for any of that?

Paying full pay tuition is a low bar for families.

Yes, the household income distribution. A family can only meaningfully afford private if they make minimum triple the annual tuition after tax. That means for a two-child family, the household needs to make approximately $300,000 after tax or about $425,000 before tax. That is greater than the top 3%. And many of those in the top 2.5-3% do not have school age children.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What I have seen at our school, families with multiple children getting substantial FA taking vacations to Europe where families like ours that are full pay for two kids can't afford to take the number of vacations the families on FA take or got to places like the FA families do. That I think is unfair.

Then you should have applied for FA. The school does not expect you to live like a pauper, even if some of the weirdos here do.

I have seen very few full pay families have to restrain themselves the way you are.

Agree. There is no reason to live like a pauper. The schools don't require aid families to do this. If you are choosing to do so then that is your choice. If it helps you sleep at night, good for you. I sleep better knowing we're not paying full price.

You can't force your standard on everyone else, especially since the schools themselves don't share your standard.

You sleep better knowing that other parents at your school are paying for your own kids? Subsidizing your kids through financial aid?

That is a weird thing to say. You are not pulling your weight as a parent. Personally I think you should try to pay back the generous gift you are receiving. Donate it all back.

You are either uninformed or just bitter. Another parent who sleeps better at night knowing they receive financial aid. We fill out our forms correctly and we receive an amount that allows us to send our children to an amazing school. We are incredibly grateful. If I ran into a tremendous amount of money, I would absolutely make a massive donation to our school, but it’s not a quid pro quo. It’s more like a sliding scale for those of you that are so confused.

You are receiving a generous gift. The entitlement on display among some of the posters is really shocking. I have donated large amounts to our school and I am reconsidering my priorities.


They aren’t giving you a discount. They are supposed to be offering a life altering gift to your children.

Can you please explain the difference between a gift of partial tuition and a discount on tuition?

It is a gift because generous donors are paying it for you. Their philanthropy makes it possible. The money has to come from somewhere, and it is from donations as well as from the full pay families who pay thousands more in tuition each year to make financial aid possible.

If you are on financial aid, there are other people paying the bill for your kids.

At the schools with the largest donors and endowments, even the full pay kids have other people paying the bill for them. Hope you wrote them a thank you note.

your reference to thank you notes is mostly sarcastic, but it would be nice if the kids and families of the kids being subsidized showed some gratitude to the wealthier families who are subsidizing them; many of these schools seem to have a culture of looking at "privilege" as something negative.

This is a joke, right? Financial aid is coming from the endowment and other sources. It’s not coming from anybody else’s tuition.

Yet another example how this site is full on fan-fiction for most people. Anon is great and important, but there's a very large % of people here just commenting on **** they have no clue about (pretty much like everywhere else on the Internet)

But the other poster is correct, at least at schools with decent endowments (which is most of the good ones).

We are discussing local private schools, not colleges. None of the local private schools have endowments that are a major funding source of financial aid since they are relatively small compared to universities. Financial aid funds comes from donors and from full pay tuition.

Sidwell's endowment is $92.4 million. The endowment pays millions toward financial aid each year.

That is a pretty small endowment. I hope you were joking. Most of those funds are restricted and can’t just be used for financial aid, even if they wanted to.

That's not a small endowment, particularly considering it's a day school with small enrollment. It's high per capita. At 5% per year (the suggested draw rate), they're generating between 4 and 5 million. And restricted gifts are a farce and everyone in endowment management and finance knows it. All money is fungible.

The endowment is tiny, actually. 5% per year would go towards the whole budget. A tiny fraction would go towards financial aid, under the best circumstances. You sort of get it but also need to know, this endowment is not only for financial aid. It has other purposes.

Do you understand the fungibility of money at all? Any spent endowment returns are money that doesn't need to generated from tuition.

Sure, but this is a school that primarily serves the full tuition paying families that attend. The top priorities in the operating budget are things like salaries related to faculty and staff recruitment and retention, facilities upkeep and maintenance, etc. Financial aid is nice but they have to budget running an elite private school.

No, it serves all of the students who attend.

Okay, but they primarily serve the paying customers, which are the full pay tuition families. The families on financial aid are receiving charity and are not keeping the lights on. They are only there due to the diversity initiatives that benefit the full pay families.

Virtually all financial aid recipients are also paying customers. They just receive a discount based on their assessed need. An FA family with three kids at the school could be paying over $100,000 a year.

FA allows schools to select best fit families who could not otherwise afford the full tuition. That is a boon to the school community. Imagine only being able to select amongst families who can pay $50,000 per year per kid. That would really dampen the quality of students.

I would argue that restricting the school community to full pay families would have the opposite effect and improve the quality of students. By removing expensive diversity initiatives the school can focus on families who are more invested in their children.

Paying half tuition or any sort of reduced tuition is like throwing money out of the door of the school. There are enough full pay customers that these programs are a waste.

Lots of extremely talented students who fit with the school have parents who can't quite pay 50k/yr per kid. That's pretty indisputable. The pool of families who can pay that tuition is pretty small, and so limiting the student body to only them will inevitably result in admitting kids who aren't the best of the best.

Also, why do you think FA is a "diversity initiative"? It's an enrollment management tool and something that ensures the highest quality student body. FA has been around decades before DEI became widespread.

There is no evidence that financial aid improves the quality of the student body. If you have any, please provide it. Financial aid students are merely there for the benefit of full pay families, as described below.

It is a diversity initiative that allows the school to market themselves are more accessible / less elitist and also allows families who want socioeconomic diversity to have some.

However families who cannot even pay full tuition introduce problems to the school community. Families with so many kids they need financial aid are clearly spreading themselves too thin. Children benefit from parents investing in them with adequate resources available for them to raise a child successfully.


Raising children well is expensive and pretending that a family in financial distress can do it equally to a family who is financially responsible would be just wrong.

What problems are introduced to the school community by families who do not pay full tuition?

The types of problems you see in low income households.

Ah yes, those 200k HHI “low income” families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume you know that a) unqualified people apply, b) lots of those applications come from families needing aid, and c) many private schools aren’t all that selective.

Do you have evidence for any of that?

Paying full pay tuition is a low bar for families.

Yes, the household income distribution. A family can only meaningfully afford private if they make minimum triple the annual tuition after tax. That means for a two-child family, the household needs to make approximately $300,000 after tax or about $425,000 before tax. That is greater than the top 3%. And many of those in the top 2.5-3% do not have school age children.

And then of course a good chunk of those kids won’t be qualified. They’ll have learning disabilities or too low IQs to be successful at the school. Or just simply won’t be a good fit.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What I have seen at our school, families with multiple children getting substantial FA taking vacations to Europe where families like ours that are full pay for two kids can't afford to take the number of vacations the families on FA take or got to places like the FA families do. That I think is unfair.

Then you should have applied for FA. The school does not expect you to live like a pauper, even if some of the weirdos here do.

I have seen very few full pay families have to restrain themselves the way you are.

Agree. There is no reason to live like a pauper. The schools don't require aid families to do this. If you are choosing to do so then that is your choice. If it helps you sleep at night, good for you. I sleep better knowing we're not paying full price.

You can't force your standard on everyone else, especially since the schools themselves don't share your standard.

You sleep better knowing that other parents at your school are paying for your own kids? Subsidizing your kids through financial aid?

That is a weird thing to say. You are not pulling your weight as a parent. Personally I think you should try to pay back the generous gift you are receiving. Donate it all back.

You are either uninformed or just bitter. Another parent who sleeps better at night knowing they receive financial aid. We fill out our forms correctly and we receive an amount that allows us to send our children to an amazing school. We are incredibly grateful. If I ran into a tremendous amount of money, I would absolutely make a massive donation to our school, but it’s not a quid pro quo. It’s more like a sliding scale for those of you that are so confused.

You are receiving a generous gift. The entitlement on display among some of the posters is really shocking. I have donated large amounts to our school and I am reconsidering my priorities.


They aren’t giving you a discount. They are supposed to be offering a life altering gift to your children.

Can you please explain the difference between a gift of partial tuition and a discount on tuition?

It is a gift because generous donors are paying it for you. Their philanthropy makes it possible. The money has to come from somewhere, and it is from donations as well as from the full pay families who pay thousands more in tuition each year to make financial aid possible.

If you are on financial aid, there are other people paying the bill for your kids.

At the schools with the largest donors and endowments, even the full pay kids have other people paying the bill for them. Hope you wrote them a thank you note.

your reference to thank you notes is mostly sarcastic, but it would be nice if the kids and families of the kids being subsidized showed some gratitude to the wealthier families who are subsidizing them; many of these schools seem to have a culture of looking at "privilege" as something negative.

This is a joke, right? Financial aid is coming from the endowment and other sources. It’s not coming from anybody else’s tuition.

Yet another example how this site is full on fan-fiction for most people. Anon is great and important, but there's a very large % of people here just commenting on **** they have no clue about (pretty much like everywhere else on the Internet)

But the other poster is correct, at least at schools with decent endowments (which is most of the good ones).

We are discussing local private schools, not colleges. None of the local private schools have endowments that are a major funding source of financial aid since they are relatively small compared to universities. Financial aid funds comes from donors and from full pay tuition.

Sidwell's endowment is $92.4 million. The endowment pays millions toward financial aid each year.

That is a pretty small endowment. I hope you were joking. Most of those funds are restricted and can’t just be used for financial aid, even if they wanted to.

That's not a small endowment, particularly considering it's a day school with small enrollment. It's high per capita. At 5% per year (the suggested draw rate), they're generating between 4 and 5 million. And restricted gifts are a farce and everyone in endowment management and finance knows it. All money is fungible.

The endowment is tiny, actually. 5% per year would go towards the whole budget. A tiny fraction would go towards financial aid, under the best circumstances. You sort of get it but also need to know, this endowment is not only for financial aid. It has other purposes.

Do you understand the fungibility of money at all? Any spent endowment returns are money that doesn't need to generated from tuition.

Sure, but this is a school that primarily serves the full tuition paying families that attend. The top priorities in the operating budget are things like salaries related to faculty and staff recruitment and retention, facilities upkeep and maintenance, etc. Financial aid is nice but they have to budget running an elite private school.

No, it serves all of the students who attend.

Okay, but they primarily serve the paying customers, which are the full pay tuition families. The families on financial aid are receiving charity and are not keeping the lights on. They are only there due to the diversity initiatives that benefit the full pay families.

Virtually all financial aid recipients are also paying customers. They just receive a discount based on their assessed need. An FA family with three kids at the school could be paying over $100,000 a year.

FA allows schools to select best fit families who could not otherwise afford the full tuition. That is a boon to the school community. Imagine only being able to select amongst families who can pay $50,000 per year per kid. That would really dampen the quality of students.

I would argue that restricting the school community to full pay families would have the opposite effect and improve the quality of students. By removing expensive diversity initiatives the school can focus on families who are more invested in their children.

Paying half tuition or any sort of reduced tuition is like throwing money out of the door of the school. There are enough full pay customers that these programs are a waste.

Lots of extremely talented students who fit with the school have parents who can't quite pay 50k/yr per kid. That's pretty indisputable. The pool of families who can pay that tuition is pretty small, and so limiting the student body to only them will inevitably result in admitting kids who aren't the best of the best.

Also, why do you think FA is a "diversity initiative"? It's an enrollment management tool and something that ensures the highest quality student body. FA has been around decades before DEI became widespread.

There is no evidence that financial aid improves the quality of the student body. If you have any, please provide it. Financial aid students are merely there for the benefit of full pay families, as described below.

It is a diversity initiative that allows the school to market themselves are more accessible / less elitist and also allows families who want socioeconomic diversity to have some.

However families who cannot even pay full tuition introduce problems to the school community. Families with so many kids they need financial aid are clearly spreading themselves too thin. Children benefit from parents investing in them with adequate resources available for them to raise a child successfully.


Raising children well is expensive and pretending that a family in financial distress can do it equally to a family who is financially responsible would be just wrong.

What problems are introduced to the school community by families who do not pay full tuition?

The types of problems you see in low income households.

You almost had me. Now I know you're just trolling. My child's school has families with incomes of >$400k that receive aid. Aid ≠ low-income.

The pp that claimed jealousy. I believe you're absolutely right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I have seen at our school, families with multiple children getting substantial FA taking vacations to Europe where families like ours that are full pay for two kids can't afford to take the number of vacations the families on FA take or got to places like the FA families do. That I think is unfair.

Then you should have applied for FA. The school does not expect you to live like a pauper, even if some of the weirdos here do.

I have seen very few full pay families have to restrain themselves the way you are.

Agree. There is no reason to live like a pauper. The schools don't require aid families to do this. If you are choosing to do so then that is your choice. If it helps you sleep at night, good for you. I sleep better knowing we're not paying full price.

You can't force your standard on everyone else, especially since the schools themselves don't share your standard.

You sleep better knowing that other parents at your school are paying for your own kids? Subsidizing your kids through financial aid?

That is a weird thing to say. You are not pulling your weight as a parent. Personally I think you should try to pay back the generous gift you are receiving. Donate it all back.

You are either uninformed or just bitter. Another parent who sleeps better at night knowing they receive financial aid. We fill out our forms correctly and we receive an amount that allows us to send our children to an amazing school. We are incredibly grateful. If I ran into a tremendous amount of money, I would absolutely make a massive donation to our school, but it’s not a quid pro quo. It’s more like a sliding scale for those of you that are so confused.

You are receiving a generous gift. The entitlement on display among some of the posters is really shocking. I have donated large amounts to our school and I am reconsidering my priorities.


They aren’t giving you a discount. They are supposed to be offering a life altering gift to your children.

Can you please explain the difference between a gift of partial tuition and a discount on tuition?

It is a gift because generous donors are paying it for you. Their philanthropy makes it possible. The money has to come from somewhere, and it is from donations as well as from the full pay families who pay thousands more in tuition each year to make financial aid possible.

If you are on financial aid, there are other people paying the bill for your kids.

At the schools with the largest donors and endowments, even the full pay kids have other people paying the bill for them. Hope you wrote them a thank you note.

your reference to thank you notes is mostly sarcastic, but it would be nice if the kids and families of the kids being subsidized showed some gratitude to the wealthier families who are subsidizing them; many of these schools seem to have a culture of looking at "privilege" as something negative.

This is a joke, right? Financial aid is coming from the endowment and other sources. It’s not coming from anybody else’s tuition.

Yet another example how this site is full on fan-fiction for most people. Anon is great and important, but there's a very large % of people here just commenting on **** they have no clue about (pretty much like everywhere else on the Internet)

But the other poster is correct, at least at schools with decent endowments (which is most of the good ones).

We are discussing local private schools, not colleges. None of the local private schools have endowments that are a major funding source of financial aid since they are relatively small compared to universities. Financial aid funds comes from donors and from full pay tuition.

Sidwell's endowment is $92.4 million. The endowment pays millions toward financial aid each year.

That is a pretty small endowment. I hope you were joking. Most of those funds are restricted and can’t just be used for financial aid, even if they wanted to.

That's not a small endowment, particularly considering it's a day school with small enrollment. It's high per capita. At 5% per year (the suggested draw rate), they're generating between 4 and 5 million. And restricted gifts are a farce and everyone in endowment management and finance knows it. All money is fungible.

The endowment is tiny, actually. 5% per year would go towards the whole budget. A tiny fraction would go towards financial aid, under the best circumstances. You sort of get it but also need to know, this endowment is not only for financial aid. It has other purposes.

Do you understand the fungibility of money at all? Any spent endowment returns are money that doesn't need to generated from tuition.

Sure, but this is a school that primarily serves the full tuition paying families that attend. The top priorities in the operating budget are things like salaries related to faculty and staff recruitment and retention, facilities upkeep and maintenance, etc. Financial aid is nice but they have to budget running an elite private school.

No, it serves all of the students who attend.

Okay, but they primarily serve the paying customers, which are the full pay tuition families. The families on financial aid are receiving charity and are not keeping the lights on. They are only there due to the diversity initiatives that benefit the full pay families.

Virtually all financial aid recipients are also paying customers. They just receive a discount based on their assessed need. An FA family with three kids at the school could be paying over $100,000 a year.

FA allows schools to select best fit families who could not otherwise afford the full tuition. That is a boon to the school community. Imagine only being able to select amongst families who can pay $50,000 per year per kid. That would really dampen the quality of students.

I would argue that restricting the school community to full pay families would have the opposite effect and improve the quality of students. By removing expensive diversity initiatives the school can focus on families who are more invested in their children.

Paying half tuition or any sort of reduced tuition is like throwing money out of the door of the school. There are enough full pay customers that these programs are a waste.

Lots of extremely talented students who fit with the school have parents who can't quite pay 50k/yr per kid. That's pretty indisputable. The pool of families who can pay that tuition is pretty small, and so limiting the student body to only them will inevitably result in admitting kids who aren't the best of the best.

Also, why do you think FA is a "diversity initiative"? It's an enrollment management tool and something that ensures the highest quality student body. FA has been around decades before DEI became widespread.

There is no evidence that financial aid improves the quality of the student body. If you have any, please provide it. Financial aid students are merely there for the benefit of full pay families, as described below.

It is a diversity initiative that allows the school to market themselves are more accessible / less elitist and also allows families who want socioeconomic diversity to have some.

However families who cannot even pay full tuition introduce problems to the school community. Families with so many kids they need financial aid are clearly spreading themselves too thin. Children benefit from parents investing in them with adequate resources available for them to raise a child successfully.


Raising children well is expensive and pretending that a family in financial distress can do it equally to a family who is financially responsible would be just wrong.

What problems are introduced to the school community by families who do not pay full tuition?

The types of problems you see in low income households.

You almost had me. Now I know you're just trolling. My child's school has families with incomes of >$400k that receive aid. Aid ≠ low-income.

The pp that claimed jealousy. I believe you're absolutely right.

If the financial aid office has determined they cannot meet their expenses, presumably due to a large number of children, why wouldn’t that be low income? That is low income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I have seen at our school, families with multiple children getting substantial FA taking vacations to Europe where families like ours that are full pay for two kids can't afford to take the number of vacations the families on FA take or got to places like the FA families do. That I think is unfair.

Then you should have applied for FA. The school does not expect you to live like a pauper, even if some of the weirdos here do.

I have seen very few full pay families have to restrain themselves the way you are.

Agree. There is no reason to live like a pauper. The schools don't require aid families to do this. If you are choosing to do so then that is your choice. If it helps you sleep at night, good for you. I sleep better knowing we're not paying full price.

You can't force your standard on everyone else, especially since the schools themselves don't share your standard.

You sleep better knowing that other parents at your school are paying for your own kids? Subsidizing your kids through financial aid?

That is a weird thing to say. You are not pulling your weight as a parent. Personally I think you should try to pay back the generous gift you are receiving. Donate it all back.

You are either uninformed or just bitter. Another parent who sleeps better at night knowing they receive financial aid. We fill out our forms correctly and we receive an amount that allows us to send our children to an amazing school. We are incredibly grateful. If I ran into a tremendous amount of money, I would absolutely make a massive donation to our school, but it’s not a quid pro quo. It’s more like a sliding scale for those of you that are so confused.

You are receiving a generous gift. The entitlement on display among some of the posters is really shocking. I have donated large amounts to our school and I am reconsidering my priorities.


They aren’t giving you a discount. They are supposed to be offering a life altering gift to your children.

Can you please explain the difference between a gift of partial tuition and a discount on tuition?

It is a gift because generous donors are paying it for you. Their philanthropy makes it possible. The money has to come from somewhere, and it is from donations as well as from the full pay families who pay thousands more in tuition each year to make financial aid possible.

If you are on financial aid, there are other people paying the bill for your kids.

At the schools with the largest donors and endowments, even the full pay kids have other people paying the bill for them. Hope you wrote them a thank you note.

your reference to thank you notes is mostly sarcastic, but it would be nice if the kids and families of the kids being subsidized showed some gratitude to the wealthier families who are subsidizing them; many of these schools seem to have a culture of looking at "privilege" as something negative.

This is a joke, right? Financial aid is coming from the endowment and other sources. It’s not coming from anybody else’s tuition.

Yet another example how this site is full on fan-fiction for most people. Anon is great and important, but there's a very large % of people here just commenting on **** they have no clue about (pretty much like everywhere else on the Internet)

But the other poster is correct, at least at schools with decent endowments (which is most of the good ones).

We are discussing local private schools, not colleges. None of the local private schools have endowments that are a major funding source of financial aid since they are relatively small compared to universities. Financial aid funds comes from donors and from full pay tuition.

Sidwell's endowment is $92.4 million. The endowment pays millions toward financial aid each year.

That is a pretty small endowment. I hope you were joking. Most of those funds are restricted and can’t just be used for financial aid, even if they wanted to.

That's not a small endowment, particularly considering it's a day school with small enrollment. It's high per capita. At 5% per year (the suggested draw rate), they're generating between 4 and 5 million. And restricted gifts are a farce and everyone in endowment management and finance knows it. All money is fungible.

The endowment is tiny, actually. 5% per year would go towards the whole budget. A tiny fraction would go towards financial aid, under the best circumstances. You sort of get it but also need to know, this endowment is not only for financial aid. It has other purposes.

Do you understand the fungibility of money at all? Any spent endowment returns are money that doesn't need to generated from tuition.

Sure, but this is a school that primarily serves the full tuition paying families that attend. The top priorities in the operating budget are things like salaries related to faculty and staff recruitment and retention, facilities upkeep and maintenance, etc. Financial aid is nice but they have to budget running an elite private school.

No, it serves all of the students who attend.

Okay, but they primarily serve the paying customers, which are the full pay tuition families. The families on financial aid are receiving charity and are not keeping the lights on. They are only there due to the diversity initiatives that benefit the full pay families.

Virtually all financial aid recipients are also paying customers. They just receive a discount based on their assessed need. An FA family with three kids at the school could be paying over $100,000 a year.

FA allows schools to select best fit families who could not otherwise afford the full tuition. That is a boon to the school community. Imagine only being able to select amongst families who can pay $50,000 per year per kid. That would really dampen the quality of students.

I would argue that restricting the school community to full pay families would have the opposite effect and improve the quality of students. By removing expensive diversity initiatives the school can focus on families who are more invested in their children.

Paying half tuition or any sort of reduced tuition is like throwing money out of the door of the school. There are enough full pay customers that these programs are a waste.

Lots of extremely talented students who fit with the school have parents who can't quite pay 50k/yr per kid. That's pretty indisputable. The pool of families who can pay that tuition is pretty small, and so limiting the student body to only them will inevitably result in admitting kids who aren't the best of the best.

Also, why do you think FA is a "diversity initiative"? It's an enrollment management tool and something that ensures the highest quality student body. FA has been around decades before DEI became widespread.

+1. Calling FA a diversity initiative simply serves to highlight the incredible ignorance on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume you know that a) unqualified people apply, b) lots of those applications come from families needing aid, and c) many private schools aren’t all that selective.

Do you have evidence for any of that?

Paying full pay tuition is a low bar for families.

Okay, yeah, this is a troll. Thread is filled with trolls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I have seen at our school, families with multiple children getting substantial FA taking vacations to Europe where families like ours that are full pay for two kids can't afford to take the number of vacations the families on FA take or got to places like the FA families do. That I think is unfair.

Then you should have applied for FA. The school does not expect you to live like a pauper, even if some of the weirdos here do.

I have seen very few full pay families have to restrain themselves the way you are.

Agree. There is no reason to live like a pauper. The schools don't require aid families to do this. If you are choosing to do so then that is your choice. If it helps you sleep at night, good for you. I sleep better knowing we're not paying full price.

You can't force your standard on everyone else, especially since the schools themselves don't share your standard.

You sleep better knowing that other parents at your school are paying for your own kids? Subsidizing your kids through financial aid?

That is a weird thing to say. You are not pulling your weight as a parent. Personally I think you should try to pay back the generous gift you are receiving. Donate it all back.

You are either uninformed or just bitter. Another parent who sleeps better at night knowing they receive financial aid. We fill out our forms correctly and we receive an amount that allows us to send our children to an amazing school. We are incredibly grateful. If I ran into a tremendous amount of money, I would absolutely make a massive donation to our school, but it’s not a quid pro quo. It’s more like a sliding scale for those of you that are so confused.

You are receiving a generous gift. The entitlement on display among some of the posters is really shocking. I have donated large amounts to our school and I am reconsidering my priorities.


They aren’t giving you a discount. They are supposed to be offering a life altering gift to your children.

Can you please explain the difference between a gift of partial tuition and a discount on tuition?

It is a gift because generous donors are paying it for you. Their philanthropy makes it possible. The money has to come from somewhere, and it is from donations as well as from the full pay families who pay thousands more in tuition each year to make financial aid possible.

If you are on financial aid, there are other people paying the bill for your kids.

At the schools with the largest donors and endowments, even the full pay kids have other people paying the bill for them. Hope you wrote them a thank you note.

your reference to thank you notes is mostly sarcastic, but it would be nice if the kids and families of the kids being subsidized showed some gratitude to the wealthier families who are subsidizing them; many of these schools seem to have a culture of looking at "privilege" as something negative.

This is a joke, right? Financial aid is coming from the endowment and other sources. It’s not coming from anybody else’s tuition.

Yet another example how this site is full on fan-fiction for most people. Anon is great and important, but there's a very large % of people here just commenting on **** they have no clue about (pretty much like everywhere else on the Internet)

But the other poster is correct, at least at schools with decent endowments (which is most of the good ones).

We are discussing local private schools, not colleges. None of the local private schools have endowments that are a major funding source of financial aid since they are relatively small compared to universities. Financial aid funds comes from donors and from full pay tuition.

Sidwell's endowment is $92.4 million. The endowment pays millions toward financial aid each year.

That is a pretty small endowment. I hope you were joking. Most of those funds are restricted and can’t just be used for financial aid, even if they wanted to.

That's not a small endowment, particularly considering it's a day school with small enrollment. It's high per capita. At 5% per year (the suggested draw rate), they're generating between 4 and 5 million. And restricted gifts are a farce and everyone in endowment management and finance knows it. All money is fungible.

The endowment is tiny, actually. 5% per year would go towards the whole budget. A tiny fraction would go towards financial aid, under the best circumstances. You sort of get it but also need to know, this endowment is not only for financial aid. It has other purposes.

Do you understand the fungibility of money at all? Any spent endowment returns are money that doesn't need to generated from tuition.

Sure, but this is a school that primarily serves the full tuition paying families that attend. The top priorities in the operating budget are things like salaries related to faculty and staff recruitment and retention, facilities upkeep and maintenance, etc. Financial aid is nice but they have to budget running an elite private school.

No, it serves all of the students who attend.

Okay, but they primarily serve the paying customers, which are the full pay tuition families. The families on financial aid are receiving charity and are not keeping the lights on. They are only there due to the diversity initiatives that benefit the full pay families.

Virtually all financial aid recipients are also paying customers. They just receive a discount based on their assessed need. An FA family with three kids at the school could be paying over $100,000 a year.

FA allows schools to select best fit families who could not otherwise afford the full tuition. That is a boon to the school community. Imagine only being able to select amongst families who can pay $50,000 per year per kid. That would really dampen the quality of students.

I would argue that restricting the school community to full pay families would have the opposite effect and improve the quality of students. By removing expensive diversity initiatives the school can focus on families who are more invested in their children.

Paying half tuition or any sort of reduced tuition is like throwing money out of the door of the school. There are enough full pay customers that these programs are a waste.

Lots of extremely talented students who fit with the school have parents who can't quite pay 50k/yr per kid. That's pretty indisputable. The pool of families who can pay that tuition is pretty small, and so limiting the student body to only them will inevitably result in admitting kids who aren't the best of the best.

Also, why do you think FA is a "diversity initiative"? It's an enrollment management tool and something that ensures the highest quality student body. FA has been around decades before DEI became widespread.

There is no evidence that financial aid improves the quality of the student body. If you have any, please provide it. Financial aid students are merely there for the benefit of full pay families, as described below.

It is a diversity initiative that allows the school to market themselves are more accessible / less elitist and also allows families who want socioeconomic diversity to have some.

However families who cannot even pay full tuition introduce problems to the school community. Families with so many kids they need financial aid are clearly spreading themselves too thin. Children benefit from parents investing in them with adequate resources available for them to raise a child successfully.


Raising children well is expensive and pretending that a family in financial distress can do it equally to a family who is financially responsible would be just wrong.

What problems are introduced to the school community by families who do not pay full tuition?

The types of problems you see in low income households.

You almost had me. Now I know you're just trolling. My child's school has families with incomes of >$400k that receive aid. Aid ≠ low-income.

The pp that claimed jealousy. I believe you're absolutely right.

If the financial aid office has determined they cannot meet their expenses, presumably due to a large number of children, why wouldn’t that be low income? That is low income.

No. And you know this. Low income is an objective measurement made based on the normal income distribution. A family making 150k pre tax is not low income (they’re well above the median household income), but cannot reasonably afford over $50,000 per year for their one child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume you know that a) unqualified people apply, b) lots of those applications come from families needing aid, and c) many private schools aren’t all that selective.

Do you have evidence for any of that?

Paying full pay tuition is a low bar for families.

Okay, yeah, this is a troll. Thread is filled with trolls.

No kidding. And you keep feeding it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume you know that a) unqualified people apply, b) lots of those applications come from families needing aid, and c) many private schools aren’t all that selective.

Do you have evidence for any of that?

Paying full pay tuition is a low bar for families.

Okay, yeah, this is a troll. Thread is filled with trolls.

No kidding. And you keep feeding it.

Seriously, drop the rope.

[Anonymous]

Isn't the model of the uber wealthy pay full price and subsidize the rich and middle class exactly what the some in the government want to do by increasing the tax burden on the billionaires?

It's all just a matter of degrees. To a family of 4 making $100K, $300K is inconceivable. To a family of 4 making $300K, they feel they are just getting by. At $500K, they feel there is some breathing room but not enough for luxuries for everyone in the family. At $750K, the purse strings are loosened and the money is there but it still stings when the bank account drops. At$1M, it's just another bill and at $10M, it's the price of an education.

Everyone always feels they deserve a bigger piece of the pie and that they already contribute more than their fair share.

[Anonymous]

I didn’t bother reading all 25 pages, but I’ll share our FA experience. We are a HHI less than 200k, hovering around 180k. We live in upper MoCo and our children were zoned for a school with known gang problems and very high FARMS. Our oldest started in the public for k and one, but then we transferred to a Catholic K-8 almost 25min away for many reasons. We received $500 from the ADW then. For HS, my kids received 50% tuition off. We couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. We couldn’t sell our house for years bc we were upside down, and our local public was seriously unsafe.

I don’t feel guilty one bit receiving FA. We applied, we received. My husband is blue collar, I’m a teacher. We work hard. Very hard. If we could’ve moved to a safer public, we would’ve, but we couldn’t, so we made the best decision we could for our family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t bother reading all 25 pages, but I’ll share our FA experience. We are a HHI less than 200k, hovering around 180k. We live in upper MoCo and our children were zoned for a school with known gang problems and very high FARMS. Our oldest started in the public for k and one, but then we transferred to a Catholic K-8 almost 25min away for many reasons. We received $500 from the ADW then. For HS, my kids received 50% tuition off. We couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. We couldn’t sell our house for years bc we were upside down, and our local public was seriously unsafe.

I don’t feel guilty one bit receiving FA. We applied, we received. My husband is blue collar, I’m a teacher. We work hard. Very hard. If we could’ve moved to a safer public, we would’ve, but we couldn’t, so we made the best decision we could for our family.

Why couldn’t you move? I don’t understand why you live in such an unsafe area and attend private school. Wouldn’t you be better off in a decent suburb and in public school?

[Anonymous]

We were upside down on our house for more than a decade. We bought it at the height of the market and then, well everyone knows what happened.

My neighborhood is actually very safe and quiet, all SFH. One mile in each direction are pockets of places you would not want to live.

Check out testing, safety, and demographics for Watkins Mill HS and Neelsville MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t bother reading all 25 pages, but I’ll share our FA experience. We are a HHI less than 200k, hovering around 180k. We live in upper MoCo and our children were zoned for a school with known gang problems and very high FARMS. Our oldest started in the public for k and one, but then we transferred to a Catholic K-8 almost 25min away for many reasons. We received $500 from the ADW then. For HS, my kids received 50% tuition off. We couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. We couldn’t sell our house for years bc we were upside down, and our local public was seriously unsafe.

I don’t feel guilty one bit receiving FA. We applied, we received. My husband is blue collar, I’m a teacher. We work hard. Very hard. If we could’ve moved to a safer public, we would’ve, but we couldn’t, so we made the best decision we could for our family.

Why couldn’t you move? I don’t understand why you live in such an unsafe area and attend private school. Wouldn’t you be better off in a decent suburb and in public school?

Just sell your house and buy a new one!! It's not like it costs 5-6% of your home value to do that, not to mention living expenses. And if someone just bought and/or the market goes down, they'll be underwater and unable to sell.