Our house is now worth over $1 million but we bought it for 300k nearly 18 years ago.

I don’t agree with PPs that FA provides for socioeconomic diversity. Most schools do not give that much in FA (at most half), so the families still need to come up with quite a lot of tuition. The low income families in the schools my DCs attend are the kids whose grandparents pay for the tuition.

I think I love you, PP. My DC is able to attend a local private thanks to FA.

Private school is not just for people who can afford it on their own. I do not get any FA, but I would not want my child going to a socioeconomically homogeneous school. There are very good reasons that FA is given by private schools: FA enables a diverse, well-rounded community in which to learn, and children do learn from one another. I support FA philosophically and practically, with my donations.

If you cant afford it, dont send them.... thats why we have public schools.

My neighbor went poor sending their kids to private schools and ended pulling them. If you cant afford it, dont send them.....

interesting thread...

For every family who you perceive should not qualify for financial aid, you likely know another family who would qualify for financial aid but does not apply because of embarrassment or out of sense that there is always someone more needy than them. These latter families often leave a School and that's a loss.

And to the pp - don't be naive -- everyone zillows their friends' and/or neighbors' houses. It's just our world now. And yes, zillow, in my opinion, is often overly bullish on prices.

Anonymous wrote:I don't assume that everybody living in a $1 million+ house is equally affluent. But it's a pretty safe bet that anyone living in $1 million+ house has or has had more economic resources available to them than most people in the US.

And I don't assume that it's only people living in $1 million+ houses who have medical bills, unemployment crises, and other family members to support.

We lived in a million dollar plus home and got financial aid for preschool (which is generally less expensive than elementary school). Of course we didn't actually OWN the home, and lived there for very limited rent so I could help care for the elderly relative who lived there.

But if you didn't know me you wouldn't know that -- how would you know who owned the house and who didn't?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is the Financial Aid given to parents public information? Aren't there privacy rules? I don't think that information should be disclosed because it causes a lot of the judgement calls that have been going on in this forum. In addition, the negative feelings non financial aid parents have can be passed on to their kids who can go ahead and make the recipient kids feel poorly in school for something that has nothing to do with the child.

Anyone agree?

It is all strictly confidential. No one knows who receives FA.

More crap from the wisdom on this board. "No one knows". Yes, FA officers know. And they blab!

Zillow is off.

Great point PP.

Meanwhile I am not going back several pages to find the snarky comment about how we all come here and are probably ladies who do lunch so why did I make fun of someone "zillowing" the FA recipient's house? Well, coming to this forum is to help navigate the muddled waters of private area schools. I have learned a lot -- about school's cultures, about how to deal with certain issues, about the application processes, etc. I am sure we all have or we would not keep coming back. But using a free service to find out about your "friend's" home value is a little creepy and intrusive. Why don't you order an investigative report t get her credit rating and other info on her too? You can do that online too, and only for a nominal fee!

I am joking but where does it end? We can use the web to find out so much about each other, but we still may not have all the variables and documentation that the FA offices have in making FA decisions. On another thread, someone with 600k equity in their house and a AGI of 145,000 was refused ANY aid. It isn't the salary. It has to be the equity in the house.

No one is arguing that anyone abusing the system isn't wrong. Double negative but you get the point. People not disclosing their true wealth are committing fraud and should be denied FA and in fact prosecuted to recover any $ given to them under false premises. But most people are following the rules. Some of you think those rules need to be fixed and there should be absolute limits. But there will always be judgments -- big families (with big incomes) not being able to pay $140,000 (for 4 kids for example) per year, someone supporting their elderly parents, temporarily unemployed former full pays, single parents, families undergoing high medical bills, etc.

The FA offices take the income and the assets and the expenses. Make, model, and year of all cars is noted. Educational debt is treated differently than consumer debt (ie living beyond means and racking up credit card debt). Alll this forms the basis for the numbers from the SSS, which most schools across the country subscribe to -- and they do it for a reason. To be able to compare apples to apples, and see what the parental contribution could be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Were all the posts after 11:30 pm by the same poster?

Listen, at my son's school, no one talks about who is on financial aid, but it is also clear that there are families where it would be impossible for them to pay one or two full tuitions. So in a sense, you do know. And it never enters into the minds of parents or kids in any way.

Having said that, I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with having a discussion about whether FA has been abused by families with wealth. Obviously, the intention here is to see that the system is improved. I certainly don't think anyone would question why a single mom earning 55K would get financial aid. But I would question why a person earning about $200K in a huge house is getting it.

Sigh. You really don't get it: that $200K income and "huge house" are not sufficient basis for SSS or schools to make FA decisions, and therefore you should not judge on that basis either.

Thank you - - Does the ppp think someone making $200,000 with three children can afford to spend $100,000 of pretax money on school? If they only had one child, yes, it is probably doable.

Do these threads discourage anyone from applying from FA? I doubt it. If people really need the money, I doubt they will let a few snarky comments stand in their way.