<p>OP, I am not trying to be judgemental here as this is not what you asks for.</p>
<p>A point is: Does the private college your D is going to attend provide generous need-based financial aid to a needy student? If not, many schools have something called “gapping” in their financial aid, meaning that the school expects the student’s family to come up with some portion of COA that school’s financial aid is not responsible for, that is, the family needs to take out a loan based on the family’s own credit-worthiness to the bank. If this is the case, and if the boy’s father who has more earned income is not willing to help, the boy likely does not have a means to attend the school your D will be at. The “problem” is solved unless your D decides to attend the “lesser” school her bf attends – You should count your blessing if your D does not do that. Some girl (and boy) I know of actually did this to herself and to her family. </p>
<p>The practice of “gapping” actually provides the college a good means to weed out those students who wish to be there but really should not as it may be a “financial risk” for both the school and the student (too much student’s loan or can not get enough loan due to the poor credit of the family.) No matter how a school advertises it, it will need a certain percentage of full pay students to run it.</p>
<p>Let’s face this reality: A private college with an ED policy tends to be a college which a student not from a top 20 percents would attend financially comfortably.</p>
<p>Actually, there is article that describes the phenomenon that, since the rich family tends to send their offsprings to the same set of schools and the the poor tends to send theirs to another set of schools (or not to any school), the children from the rich will more likely meet and marry those from the rich and the poor with the poor. (Isn’t there a movie called the Tiffany’s? It is about the same phenomenon. But since it is a movie, the outcome will be different from what usually would be the case.) This further segregates the rich from the poor as the wealth (and, yes, the all important connections which could lead to the wealth) never passes across the boundary between those who have and those who have not. I am not trying to criticize anything here and just want to point out the fact: Generally speaking, most people do not want to deal with people who are perceived as “below them” unless their passion is social activism (few have this passion.)</p>