Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I've seen at GDS: everyone is friendly with each other at school — but outside of school the really rich kids don't go out of their way to include non rich.

That is our experience at one of the top local Catholic girls schools. Everyone is very nice, but one of our DD's rich friends visited our home once years ago and that was that. She was apparently horrified (we don't live in a rat trap or anything, but it's a modest, basic home that needs a little work) and that was that - she seemed to distance herself from DD and went towards a more wealthy group.
I guess the mistake was having someone over to our house. You know, realizing what they have versus where we live.

DD has also gone on trips with other girls to their second homes. We have some people in our family who have a second home but they're shacks. These girls have palatial estates for second homes. It's awkward.

No tiny amount of financial aid changes that. I say tiny because the thousands that we are paying are a huge burden for us whereas their full tuition is nothing to them (we do know people who give many thousands to their big 3 school on top of multiple tuitions).

Anonymous wrote:I don't know who receives financial aid (other than friends who've talked with me about getting aid). I haven't seen any exclusion based on SES, and my middle school kids have friends who with a wide range of SES. One thing that can lead to narrowing a bit, though, is what activities/camps the kids do over the summer. In the extreme, some kids go together to expensive sleep away camp while others need to go for whatever local options are least expensive and most convenient to their neighborhoods or parents' workplace. And to the extent my kids get together more with kids who live in our neighborhood, and they sometimes form tighter bonds by seeing each other more, that can lead to a bid of breaking people up by SES (our neighborhood is mostly wealthy).

Anonymous wrote:From what I've seen at GDS: everyone is friendly with each other at school — but outside of school the really rich kids don't go out of their way to include non rich.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It depends what you mean by friends, OP.

In my elite school, I was one of the least wealthy students (there was no financial aid anyway, so I didn't realize this at first), everyone was friendly with everyone else. As an international school, absence of prejudice was especially important.

However, there was no mistaking that students who got together outside of school grouped themselves in some measure by SES. Some families belonged to the same exclusive social/dancing group, others rode horses together, others traveled extensively around the world during the summer. While everyone liked me at school, I didn't feel as if I made close friends there.

This.

Anonymous wrote:
It depends what you mean by friends, OP.

In my elite school, I was one of the least wealthy students (there was no financial aid anyway, so I didn't realize this at first), everyone was friendly with everyone else. As an international school, absence of prejudice was especially important.

However, there was no mistaking that students who got together outside of school grouped themselves in some measure by SES. Some families belonged to the same exclusive social/dancing group, others rode horses together, others traveled extensively around the world during the summer. While everyone liked me at school, I didn't feel as if I made close friends there.

This.

Anonymous wrote:At my kid's Big 3 they all hang together. I don't know, nor does my child know, who does or doesn't get FA.