<p>What is the definition? Is it just an income level? Does it have anything to do with geographic region and family size? How are they doing in the financial aid process for prep schools and for collges?</p>
<p>I guess that one could define Upper Middle Class as the bottom rung of the folks who do not get any financial aid; parents who are college-educated professionals working at regular jobs, whose savings are trashed by the economic meltdown, and scraping together tuition.</p>
<p>upper-middle-class folks, for the large part, get jack $hit in need-based aid, even though many families like that can’t spring for 50k in tuition per year, especially with multiple college student dependents.</p>
<p>In boarding school world its usually defined by people with, for the most part, advanced degrees, making 500k at the low level</p>
<p>Huh? 500K sounds like wealthy to me.</p>
<p>I agree…500K should not be too much of a problem paying for bs…UNLESS you spent it all on the big mchouse.</p>
<p>What defines a “professional”? I am a nurse and my husband a teacher. Our combined incomes would still not top 75K in our area, even with masters degrees, you still feel like the working poor (when it comes to looking at bs and college tuitions, anyway).</p>
<p>75K is the threshhold at which Exeter offers free ride. Apparently in BS world that is considered having heavy need. To me, professionals earning 500K+ are mostly likely working in bigger metropolitan areas as lawyers, fund managers or excutives. Because they are professionals they probably don’t have very big families (so 2 or 3 kids?). That does sound like an income with which one can feel comfortable paying full tuition of BS. Can we assume then the majority (80%+) of the full pay families fit in that profile?</p>
<p>Many will fit that profile, but I think it will be less than 80%. There will be parents with trust funds and students with wealthy grandparents. From my experience, there are many parents with only one child and older parents (who have accumulated some wealth) in the independent school world. You will also find upper middle class parents with a lower income and no fa who struggle financially to benefit their children or child.</p>
<p>Burbparent- so true! A lot of older fathers with second families, and a LOT of grandparents are paying too.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to see some research on occupation, income level, family size, etc. of boarding school families. Is there any out there?</p>
<p>Whoa- we are no where near that income level but are full pay.</p>
<hr>
<p>"You will also find upper middle class parents with a lower income and no fa who struggle financially to benefit their children or child. " </p>
<p>Burbparent: you hit the nail on the head describing our situation.</p>
<p>I vaguley recall seeing a link in a thread on this board to a presentation that discussed affordability of boarding school. It discussed the amount of income that a family needed to make to afford boarding school. $300,000 sticks out in my mind for some reason. This was a long time ago, maybe May of 2008. I have not been successful in locating the old thread. Maybe someone else remembers this also and can help locate the thread.</p>
<p>I think that with $300K you would be able to pay full tuition for one child, but not comfortably for two children at the same time, unless you have some “old money” from grandparents.</p>
<p>Upper Middle Class: The most suckish income level (200k-400k region) where you can look up at boarding school and dream but you won’t get any fa. We’re in a rather special situation. my dad is an expat, so his company will pay for most of my tuition (got like 3k fa from mx). we’ll come out of pocket for the rest of tuition, books, plane tickets, essentials, etc (which is still a bit of a stretch). It woudln’t be so bad if the HOUSE would sell. At least the parental units will have paid of a major student loan in August and more houses sell in the summer. let’s just hope.</p>
<p>So basically “Upper Middle Class” means that you don’t have quite enough for bs and you’re not likely to get much (if any) fa. It sucks.</p>
<p>P.S.- Is anyone looking to buy a 2000sq.ft. house in a good part of Metairie, Louisiana, close to New Orleans but in a quiet, safe area?</p>
<p>Apparently we are middle-middle class! As I suspected.</p>
<p>Just a note, we did receive FA. But we will also be scraping together the remaining amount of the tuition, the extras and even the money for clothes. So just because you may have received FA it doesn’t mean that sending your kid to BS is easy financially. We are going through the same hardships and decisions that many other parents are experiencing right now.</p>
<p>And by the way we are both college educated professionals working at regular jobs. We have also seen loss of savings and even a complete loss of pension in one case.</p>
<p>What are my chances for FA if my parents’ combined income is about 215k and my brother is going to be in college fall of 2010 (same time I’d be entering boarding school)?</p>
<p>Does applying for aid significantly lower my chances of getting in?</p>
<p>it depends on how your parents’ income is spent. if there’s lots of student loans and such, you might get a lot (my dad’s income is about that and we got very little fa). </p>
<p>in general though, applying for fa DOES reduce your chances in these economic times, given the reduced amount of fa schools can dish out.</p>
<p>hope that helps!</p>
<p>We don’t carry any debt except our mortgage and our combined income is around that and we received no FA. Kinda like a penalty for living frugally.</p>
<p>I am curious as for how big a role the EFC number from SSS plays. As the FA award is supposed to take ALL costs of BS education into consideration, I’d (arbitrarily) add about $5000 to the tuition. Taking that as the total cost, did your EFC suggest that you could get any aid?</p>