<p>In addition to what others have already said, I would complete the PFS (put in a school code for a school you did not or don’t want to apply to). Fill it out carefully and truthfully and see what comes out the other side with their report.</p>
<p>Even if you want FA in later years there’s no guarantee with an income north of $200K+ that you will qualify.</p>
<p>In my opinion calling this “lying” is harsh. The prep admissions/financial aid systems are difficult to negotiate for fallible parents–even those that might be lawyers or CPA’s. Pity the non-attorneys or those unaccustomed to dealing with such minutia. I don’t think that the parents that made this decision should be too hard on themselves.</p>
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<p>This wasn’t a misunderstanding - it was a deliberate decision to delay disclosure of financial aid need in order to give the student a “better shot” at admission. And it worked.</p>
<p>The two parents on this thread who have found themselves in this situation are not uneducated and unsophisticated. They are successful, probably well educated adults earning a high enough income to be able to pay the ~ $50k cost of boarding school for at least one year. Signing an enrollment contract at a boarding school is a commitment like any other . . . why would they think that if they change their mind about paying the tuition sometime down the road, the school would just cover the difference for them? Would they also be willing to buy a house knowing they could only pay the mortgage for one year? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>It looks as though the responders on this thread have melded my posting with that of the original poster (wayne22). Our situation is a little different from wayne22’s in that we have an “expectation” of being able to foot the bill for our child’s entire private school education. Would we have been willing to lean into the private school decision if we were at a lower level of certainty? Possibly. How low a threshold of certainty is hard to say but clearly no one wants to create a substantial possibility of needing to yank their kid out of a school that suits them well. But THAT would the driver of the decision - not some sense of duty to disclose financial information to the school. When and if we needed (or thought we had a chance of receiving) financial aid we would submit a request through the regular channels. Not asking for it in year 1 or year 2 or year 3 doesn’t strike me as particularly dishonest. Calling it “lying” is downright ridiculous.</p>
<p>Maybe some of the apparent disagreement on this topic stems from different schools approaching it differently. Do some schools tell you explicitly that its a “four year” box you are checking? Maybe they ask if you are applying as a “four-year-full-pay” student? If that’s the case, I get it. </p>
<p>Our daughter only wanted to go to one place and its the only application she submitted. This particular institution (one of the 200+ year old New England schools) is pretty clear in its communications that FA is a year-by-year event. Not just in the sense that you need to re-apply to continue receiving aid but that you can also apply in any year to begin receiving aid. Of course there are all kinds of caveats (e.g. don’t quit your job and expect to get a full-ride) but I would guess being bled dry paying multiple years of the fully inflated tuition is one of the more common reasons for later aid requests. That’s just a guess.</p>
<p>I notice that many of the older, well-endowed institutions brush close to saying that they are need-blind in admissions but they all stop short of claiming it. NBA in aspiration but not quite in fact. I don’t understand what it means to NOT be need-blind when you don’t require financials from all applicants. Folks on this board seem to suggest that there are unwritten rules about how to apply. Unwritten rules aren’t rules but opinions that, for one reason or another, are not able to become actual rules (“I’m just a bill, yeah I’m only a bill…”). If schools wanted to avoid the sophomore FA request it would be rather easily accomplished - just require everyone to submit financials when applying for admission. Or require a new application for admission when families seek to switch from subsidizers to subsidized. If a school isn’t doing that, it must not be much of a problem. And if they are doing it then there is no problem.</p>
<p>I’m sorry but the analogy of the education decision to the mortgage decision is utterly inapt. The economics and pricing dynamics are completely different. Institutions of higher education are pure price discriminators and receive significant benefit from enrolling the most highly qualified students and athletes. Wealth is inversely related to mortgage price and directly related to education price. And the possibility of a child having to leave private school prematurely is nowhere near as traumatic as a family losing their home. In a normal market, a family should be much more willing to take on the uncertainty of being able to pay 4 years of tuition versus 30 years of mortgage. The cost of failure is simply much less. </p>
<p>Its not a nice thing to think about but, with schools consciously trying to find the fuzzy line where families can just barely make it financially, should anyone be surprised that some would fail? There is risk in striking out on a private school path - even if you’ve already banked all of the cash. Each family’s risk appetite is for them to decide. I don’t find it helpful or fair to label them dishonest.</p>
<p>dzmlsience, I suggest you read page 5-9ish of the featured thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1077227-prep-school-admission-process.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1077227-prep-school-admission-process.html</a></p>
<p>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 <em>deliberately</em> 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).</p>
<p>No problems. This is a hard process to negotiate - especially excited new parents looking to provide an opportunity. </p>
<p>For the record, there are parents who DO actually enter the process with the intent of securing a spot for their child in the hopes that it will put their child in a favorable position for aid the next year. In a sense they drain their resources to come up with funds the first year so they don’t have to be in a competitive FA pool. It often backfires (I’ve overheard some angry phone calls between parents and the FA department at two local private schools). </p>
<p>Schools state that FA is a year to year event because it is adjusted annually based on family financial circumstances. But that is primarily for FA candidates. Despite what the schools tell you it is not meant to be an automatic allocation for full pay kids. Let me give you an exaggerated scenario:</p>
<p>The school allocates funds to 35% of it’s students. 65% are full pays. But if half of the latter turn around and ask for funding, the next incoming class will have to be comprised almost totally of full pays because the funds available for FA in a given year are limited. That then derails the efforts of the school to have an economically diverse incoming class.</p>
<p>Which is why the small print (and the annual enrollment letters) will explicitly spell out that full pay families must meet an earlier deadline for applying for FA and must have some significant change in circumstances to qualify. To get aid in the next year you have to meet a HIGHER standard than if you just applied for it outright. Because the school knows (and you know) that a higher percentage of full pay kids are given spots than FA candidates - which is why those who can scrape up the funds, don’t risk asking for it. </p>
<p>Which is why we suggested that parents call the school now and tell them that they misunderstood the process. Better now, then next year when it becomes clear the school may or may not deem a child as eligible for aid when weighing the same factors used to evaluate other students. Trust me - the allocation of aid is about more than just grades, scores and whether they like a student. A lot of very good students that school wanted were left on the outside, or on a waiting list, in favor of a child who it was assumed would pay the money every year.</p>
<p>Need blind is not the same as totally blind. The budget for the school assumes - “once a full pay, always a full pay” and the school is under no obligation to provide funds in subsequent years for a child that didn’t request it from the start. Hence your child could be readmitted for the second year without funds. Why risk that?</p>
<p>Which begs the question - I just looked at the Exeter calculator and the Taft grid - both schools make awards (in some cases significant) to students in the above $160,000 category (in Exeter’s case it’s above $200,000). Why would a parent not apply unless it was to skirt the competitive pool and give their child an early edge in admissions? Again - I can only see this backfiring in a major way.</p>
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<p>Except they’d lose many of their full-pay families if they tried that. A billionaire will not expose his financial holdings to outsiders for a program his family doesn’t qualify for. It would also make things difficult when trying to solicit donations. Even if the financial aid department didn’t share interesting data with development, the suspicion would arise that they had. Good luck trying to get them to return phone calls.</p>
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<p>It could be a problem for the family. It is not a problem for the school. Many families do decide they can’t afford four years of tuition and decline enrollment offers. Setting a child up to leave a community is a self-inflicted wound. It’s gambling that the school will be more merciful than the parents.</p>
<p>Most schools are very clear about not being able to apply for financial aid in successive years. Many schools went to great lengths to extend FA to previously full-pay enrolled students in the market crash of 2008. That doesn’t mean that’s an established practice. </p>
<p>And again, one person’s idea of “affordable” is not the next person’s. The schools are not trying “consciously trying to find the fuzzy line where families can just barely make it financially.” They are all concerned about socioeconomic diversity, which includes the middle class. </p>
<p>Dodgersmom used harsher language than I would. However, families know how many children they have, they know their incomes, and they know their other assets. It’s not a secret. If there’s any doubt about paying tuition for all children, the parents should apply for financial aid. I believe a majority of families do.</p>
<p>I apologize for lumping dzmlsience and the OP together. There’s clearly a difference between the two - dzmlsience entered into the admissions process intending to honor his commitment to the school; the OP entered into the process knowing in advance that he would not be able to. Big difference.</p>
<p>I appreciate dzmlsience’s suggestion that schools demand financial aid disclosures from all families - it’s an interesting idea. But most schools solve the problem by saying up front that they expect each family’s financial commitment to be honored for the full term of the student’s enrollment and cannot make any guarantee of assistance for families who are unable to do that. I wonder if the school dzmlsience’s daughter was accepted to isn’t one of the “need blind” schools (Andover or SAS), which would explain their more generous approach towards belated financial aid requests.</p>
<p>With regards to the OP, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to cut to the front of a line and then say, “Oops, I didn’t know there was a line.” As the parent of a child who knows what it feels like to be left at the back of that line, perhaps I am overreacting. But, at most schools, one of the criteria for admission is the ability to pay the tuition. If the schools aren’t making that clear, then they should.</p>
<p>I also think if the “dramatic change in circumstances” is a second child entering BS, then you apply for aid for the second child. But again, I suggest that it is not that easy to qualify for FA if you are making upwards of $200K. </p>
<p>Complete the PFS and see. Even if your plan is to apply for FA for sophomore year, there is no guarantee you will qualify even if the school is willing to consider your situation.</p>
<p>It has been our experience that the bar is very high and that the “FA calculators” on some school websites are extremely misleading.</p>
<p>Momof7th, the FA estimators on Exeter and SPS websites are based on “facts”, i.e. the income levels of the families currently on FA in the school. If you look at the “FA brochure” on SPS site ([Financial</a> Aid Brochure 2010-11](<a href=“http://www.sps.edu/flipbook/financial_aid_booklet1011/index.html]Financial”>http://www.sps.edu/flipbook/financial_aid_booklet1011/index.html)), out of ~550 students, 22 with family income between 200K-300K are receiving FA averaging $20,8xx and 7 with income >300K receiving FA averaging $21,xxx. The question is - does your family have the “special circumstances” to qualify? And if you don’t and you can afford the tuition, do you want to take the “risk” of being “discriminated” because you apply for FA?</p>
<p>There is a powerful lesson here for your whole family. You tried to game the system by being dishonest and now you have to face the consequences. I’m pretty surprised to see anyone looking for sympathy for this here.</p>
<p>Well this has been interesting and informative. Thanks for the responses. I checked out a number of other well-known schools in this region and see that some of them do, indeed, treat this subject up-front. Some simply ask parents to consider enrolling as a multi-year financial commitment or warn that initiating FA after the first year is more difficult. But others tackle the issue of the “FA two-step” head on: if you don’t seek FA in year 1 the door will be closed in years 2-4 absent a massive change in circumstance. Bang! With a disclaimer like that, I don’t think anyone can claim ignorance. And if a parent plays roulette with their kid in that situation… Well, good luck, kid.</p>
<p>Of course, as I mentioned, there are others (including my daughter’s school) that appear to be more receptive to late career FA requests. This is more in line with the way colleges handle FA where students become increasingly “needy” as they blow through the college war chest. Since many first-time PS parents’ only prior brush with FA may have been from their own experience at well-funded colleges and universities (where the practice of initiating or increasing need-based aid awards in subsequent years is common) this seems like something schools who are not need-blind should take pains to clarify. I suspect that as public school systems become increasingly exposed there will be more new families entering the private school world with college as the misleading precedent. Page 7 of a CC message board probably isn’t sufficient public notice… :-)</p>
<p>DAndrew - I don’t think we are saying different things. What I wish is that the PFS made it easier to do a sample report for families so they can see where they fall early in the process and that schools would encourage families to do that. </p>
<p>What’s missing from those numbers is a list of how many families in that income bracket who didn’t qualify. It’s quite possible to apply for FA and be deemed ineligible and get accepted.</p>
<p>I think the angst is that we have good, committed parents on this board who were either:</p>
<ol>
<li>told they were not eligible for FA and had to stretch to make it work</li>
<li>have students on the waiting list solely for FA reasons.</li>
</ol>
<p>So applying to a school as a full pay when the family can only manage the cost a single year - may have knocked out a more qualified student whose family was honest up front about needing aid (even partial aid) at the time of application.</p>
<p>I can say that I’ve seen full FA students hit much harder at admissions than families who offered to pay a portion. The latter allows the committee to spread the limited dollars among more families. Which is why the OP would have been better off filling out the PFS and offering to pay $13-15,000 a year, than hoping for substantial aid after paying the full $50,000 in the first year.</p>