financial aid question

H Schinske wrote:

I recently checked out the web page of a private school where I am, and was
surprised to discover that they make a difference in how they calculate family
income for financial aid purposes if there is a stay-at-home parent.
Essentially they use a figure for what the parent could in theory be making if
s/he went back to work. I'm not saying this is necessarily unjust (I haven't
made up my mind about that), just that I didn't know they did it that way and I
wondered if it was a new thing. Also, is this the same way financial aid is
calculated for colleges?

--Helen


I'm a bit confused. What income do they assign to the SAHP?

I thought financial aid for colleges are dependent on assets as well as
income (you need to submit income documentation). So, one family I know
was told by a college to either sell their house or take out a second
mortgage to pay for college. On the other hand, I was told by
UC-Berkeley I was eligible for a minority fellowship and I'm
Chinese-American, so I'm not sure what games universities and colleges
play.

Jeanne

wrote:

I'm a bit confused. What income do they assign to the SAHP?

As near as I can tell, the *default* is that if the SAHP is not working, they
do not give financial aid. They modify this, possibly including a guess at
potential income, according to what you tell them about your circumstances. For
instance, say husband makes $50,000, wife is not working. Wife says no point in
working during school hours for the measly $15,000 or so she could net on jobs
similar to those she has had in the past. Financial aid office says okay, but
we're going to figure your family income as $65,000 a year, and base the aid on
that. Something like that. I am totally guessing on how they would figure the
income. Or if you said "I'm spending a lot of time with my disabled mother, and
I simply can't work," they might waive the second income requirement
altogether.

I think basically what it comes down to is that they fix on this because they
*can*. There are always going to be injustices in how financial aid is
determined, because you can't go through everyone's whole circumstances and
decide who's morally worthy and who's been putting money up their noses.

But I must say, from the money point of view, homeschooling is looking a whole
lot more attractive. If the alternative is spending $10K and more per year per
kid, just *think* of what I could do for half that budget! Distance math, no
problem. Theater classes, check. Field trips, lemme at 'em!

Or I could start my own school. Hey, Beeswing? I have this basement ...

--Helen

"Moo" writes:
Most private schools do not have much of an endowment or source
of income other than tuition. Financial aid and tuition are a
zero-sum game. If one family gets a break, the other families
in the school will pay for it. Financial aid *should* be given
out very carefully.

Maybe this depends on where you live. In Silicon Valley, and I suspect
in Seattle, I think it's not uncommon for private schools to have
significant resources for financial aid that come from donations
earmarked for that purpose. It seems pretty reasonable to me for the
donors to want their donations to go to the people who need it the
most. I won't argue that financial aid systems work perfectly, but I
think it's generally better to make the effort than to throw up your
hands and just charge everyone the same.

Another thing that often happens is that the rich parents donate to the
school as well as pay tuition, which is another balancing effect. (In
some local communities here, it's pretty strongly expected that anyone
who can afford it will donate, even in the *public* schools.)

David desJardins

"H Schinske" wrote in message
...

But I must say, from the money point of view, homeschooling is looking
a whole
lot more attractive. If the alternative is spending $10K and more per
year per
kid, just *think* of what I could do for half that budget! Distance
math, no
problem. Theater classes, check. Field trips, lemme at 'em!

But seriously.... Getting down to brass tacks he Given that the
biggest financial cost would be the lack of my salary, private school
would come in way, way cheaper than homeschooling (and I'd be a lousy
teacher, for that matter). And in part because of the housing market
when we bought in, we need two incomes just to pay the mortgage on our
house.

Or I could start my own school. Hey, Beeswing? I have this basement
....

Now *that* sounds really good. I already know you're great with gifted
kids.

beeswing

In article , David desJardins wrote:
Another thing that often happens is that the rich parents donate to the
school as well as pay tuition, which is another balancing effect. (In
some local communities here, it's pretty strongly expected that anyone
who can afford it will donate, even in the *public* schools.)

In my son's school, which is NOT wealthy (41% in free or reduced-fee
lunch program), they have been asking parents to donate to the school,
in place of the traditional wrapping-paper and cookie-dough fund
raisers. The goal is to raise about $35,000 in a school of 550 kids.

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

David ) wrote:

I think it's not uncommon for private schools to have
significant resources for financial aid that come from donations
earmarked for that purpose. It seems pretty reasonable to me for the
donors to want their donations to go to the people who need it the
most.

Trouble is, if you take that to logical extremes, there would be no partial
scholarships at all, they'd spend all the available money on students who
needed full scholarships. That would exclude a whole category of people, which
would be obviously unfair too.

Financial aid is more and more puzzling the more you think about it.

--Helen