xferring between GLADCHEMS & Financial Aid

DAndrew
Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:08:24 +0000

dzmlsience, I suggest you read page 5-9ish of the featured thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1077227-prep-school-admission-process.html

At the end of page 7, someone asked a question similar the OP’s in this thread. I think you are right that some schools deliberately make the whole thing fuzzy so they can address it more flexibly with a “holistic” approach. However, since schools need to make a multi year commitment to the families they offer FA initiatially, naturally they want to control the number of families who are admitted as full pay but apply for/need FA for subsequent years. It would be a lot harder for the schools to manage budget and cost. Most schools do say that if families experince unexpected drastic changes such as job loss, they will try to help out. If however, a family didn’t apply for aid just because of a “miscalculation”, I don’t know if they would be qualified. I guess it all depends (remember they are private schools. They have a lot of flexibility in how they handle their business). There are some schools that explicitly address this concern in their FA policies (I quoted relevant terms of SPS and Hotchkiss’ in the thread I mentioned earlier).