Making $300K and getting financial aid...

Making $ 300K and getting financial aid for a first grader

By Jessica Dickler @CNNMoney May 9, 2012: 6:47 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Private schools are getting flooded with financial aid applications, and a growing number of the parents seeking help are earning $ 150,000 or more a year.

Overall, the average cost of tuition at private schools across all grades is nearly $ 22,000 a year, up 4% from a year ago and 26% higher than it was in the 2006-07 academic year, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.
And more students than ever are asking for need-based financial aid.

In the 2010-11 academic year, about 20% of families that filed for financial aid for private school earned $ 150,000 or more a year, up from just 6% in 2002-03.
Many parents have been hit hard by the recession and declining home values and can no longer afford an expensive private school education. But it's one expense they aren't willing to give up.
"There's this pressure to give your kids what you think is the best," said Robin Aronow, a school admissions consultant in New York.
At Tabor Academy, a private high school in Marion, Mass., there's been a spike in families with household incomes as high as $ 350,000 applying for assistance.

"Five years ago, they were full-pay families and they're not anymore. They just don't have the liquid assets," said Eric Long, Tabor's director of financial aid.
Annual tuition at Tabor is just shy of $ 50,000 for boarding students and $ 35,400 for day students -- and it keeps on rising.

"We're going up 5% a year and they're making 3% more each year, the difference keeps compounding," said Long.
The same holds true at Sewickley Academy in Pittsburgh, where tuition averages about $ 20,000 a year for grades kindergarten through 12.
As a result of the recession, "we saw some families take a serious hit to their income and we were committed to keeping those families here at school," said Brendan Schneider, Sewickley's director of admission and financial aid.

---Cont'ed-----

Getting the most financial aid
As a growing number of wealthy families seek financial assistance, there is less aid available for lower-income families who most need the aid.

"A greater part of the school's community is demonstrating need and that makes us less able to afford a very significant financial aid package for low-income students," said Todd Ormiston, assistant head of enrollment management at Gould Academy in Maine.

"Every year we see families with more means outpacing the families with less means," said Chantal Stevens, national director of programs at A Better Chance, a nonprofit that helps minority children get access to private school. "It's not a pretty trend."

Unlike the protocol for colleges, need-based awards are almost entirely up to the school, said Victoria Goldman, author of Manhattan Guide to Private Schools, and "private schools can do whatever they want."

Depending on the school's endowment and financial aid budgets, awards can vary wildly from school to school, explained Brian Fisher, partner at AdmissionsQuest, a private school consulting firm.

And while household income, net worth and disposable income still play a role in determining aid eligibility, schools are increasingly looking at a family's ability to pay a portion of the cost themselves.

"The more you can pay, the better your chances are of being funded," Long said. "We're still looking for socio-economic diversity but our budget can absorb far fewer of those families that can only pay $ 500 to $ 1,000 a year."

Those making between $ 150,000 and $ 350,000 a year who can pay at least 50% of the bill have become ideal candidates for aid.

Science has a girl problem
At Gould, tuition is close to $ 50,000 a year and about 40% of the student body receives financial aid. But who gets what is something few people talk about -- particularly those in the highest income bracket.

"They don't want to advertise that they are applying for financial aid. Most are very discrete and they give up this kind of information very reluctantly," said Fisher.

"It's almost like they are whispering into the phone," said Long of the more affluent families from towns like Newton, Mass. and Greenwich, Conn. who request aid to attend Tabor Academy. But, "I don't know how anyone can be embarrassed to ask for help when high school costs over $ 200,000."

That's some bullshit!!! Aint it?

High Schools that cost 200K to attend? WTF?

If you have kids, send them to Gould the tuition is 50k a year but 40% of the students get financial aid??!!!

Havent the motherfucking rich been paying less taxes for fucking decades as it is? and they have the disgrace to ask for financial aid and 40% get the money!?
But the wealthy are the first to complain about welfare, people in low-income neighbrhoods getting basically peanuts in food stamps.
Its the poor and middle-class that should be angry as all fuck. My lord.


This would make an amazing documentary.

I wish i didnt need my job.

Posted by iwin32
I've always believed that college education should be free for everyone no matter how much money you or your parents make a year, but that's just my personal opinion.

The subject is about high school though.

Fed clears China's first US bank takeover



The United States opened its banking market to China's biggest bank ICBC, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company.

Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.

The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States.

ICBC has been the most aggressive of China's "big four" banks in expanding abroad.

Outside China, it operates subsidiary banks in Asian countries and has branches in a number of countries including Germany, Japan and Singapore.

According to the Fed, the bank has total assets of roughly $ 2.5 trillion.

ICBC will buy up to 80 percent of the US unit of the Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia, which operates 13 branches in New York and California.

As part of the deal, ICBC and two state-backed financial firms -- China's sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation (CIC), and Central Huijin Investment -- will be recognized as bank holding companies, regulated as commercial US banks.

The Fed said the takeover may not occur before May 15, or later than three months from Wednesday.

---Cont'ed----

The broad expansion of China's footprint in the US market comes amid a series of financial reforms in China that could begin to open the lucrative market to US firms.

After the May 3-4 talks in Beijing, the US Treasury noted China had made "encouraging progress" on a number of issues, including taking steps toward a more open and market-oriented financial system.

The Fed said Wednesday that the ICBC proposed acquisition, which is "relatively small," would not have much of an impact on the banking market.

"The combined deposits of the relevant institutions in the Metropolitan New York banking market represent less than one percent of market deposits," the central bank noted.

ICBC already has banking and financial services in the United States through its New York branch and its subsidiary broker-dealer.

The competition includes Bank of China branches in the New York metropolitan area, and CIC, which has a noncontrolling stake in Morgan Stanley.

ICBC will pay $ 140 million to buy an 80 percent interest in Bank of East Asia USA, China's state news agency Xinhua reported in January 2011, at the time the deal was signed.

"This unprecedented acquisition of a controlling stake in a US commercial bank by a mainland bank is strategically significant," Xinhua quoted ICBC chairman Jiang Jianqing as saying.

The Fed said its Board also consulted with the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the country's main banking regulator, and pointed to steady improvement in regulation since its founding in 2003.

"For a number of years, authorities in China have continued to enhance the standards of consolidated supervision to which banks in China are subject, including through additional or refined statutory authority, regulations, and guidance," it said.

In other Fed board decisions, Bank of China, the third-largest bank, won approval for a branch in Chicago. Bank of China operates two insured federal branches in New York City and an uninsured branch in Los Angeles.

Agricultural Bank of China, the fourth-largest bank, was set to establish a branch in New York City, where it already operates a representative office.

We better start learning Chinese.

Arizona is up at arms with the immigrants but have very little to say about THEIR OWN PEOPLE selling the country out!!!
Fucking rednecks want to cry...."They taking all the good jobs." man, get the fuck out of my face.
The good jobs at what? McDonald's? Landscaping? Cleaning toilets? Nanny jobs?
Hello people, its not the latinos taking over, its the Chinese who will own us, well not all of us, the 1% they are set, nothing affects them directly ever.

Posted by M
That is bullshit. A few years back I didn't qualify for financial aid despite a family of five with one person working an entry level position. No other income like from disability either. I'd like to see the statistics of how many of those people received it AND wasted it.

There should be a documentary, I know there's one about colleges and their budgets nationwide in general.

Im sorry that you someone who could have used the help didnt get it. Im sure you arent the only one out there who was turned down, yet 40% of those wealthy families got aid to send their kids to 50K a year school.
hahahahhaha.

Look if you make 70K a year and you had a child who was smart enough to go to a 70K a year school...well then I dont think there is nothing wrong with getting financial aid, but if you are making 200K+ the government should give you the very minimum like my brother got, financial aid got him $ 3,500......what a joke.
So guess what, he had to go to his last school of choice and he meets some chick there, gets her pregnant and has to drop out of college. Sad but true.
Now im not saying, had he gone to any of his dream schools that he wouldnt gotten some chick pregnant, but maybe he might have focused more. I dont know. I do know, with his potential, dropping out of college was not his destiny so a wealthy person told me when i shared my brother's story with them.


Which brings me back to War on Drugs and the BILLIONS wasted annually on a message that has had no significant impact in stopping their use.
Too bad us the American people dont have Lobbyists, like the wealthy corporations do.

Posted by PotHeadVirgo22
I'm more upset at this college Bullshit

I know. Its more unfair cause its those families that take 30K vacation trips to Europe, they spend more on a vacation than most Americans earn in a year. Yet ask the government for money---and get it. No wonder the rich stay rich.

Meanwhile brothers in ghettos getting locked up for 5-10 years on drug possessions. Ruining their lives.

Maybe the rich have some kind of deal in place with the State, where they both make money.
Oh wait, they do! its called Prison Privatization!! Prisons for Profits. Im pretty damn sure the poor arent investing in prisons. So its gotta be the corporations and the rich. Who else?

it all has to do with our aristocratic banking system and until people open their eyesto 'solutions' other than job creation, then everything will stay the same(get worse).

I'm not really up on how financial aid works in private schools or the US at all for that matter, but I'd be surprised if this is goverment funded financial aid this article is talking about. I think it's financial aid directly from the schools themselves. (ie/ just the school offering to foot the bill for a certain % of the tuition that the family can't afford, likely from endowments left to the school from past students' parents etc.)

It's in the school's self interest to do so. If they don't offer financial aid, then their enrolement will be down, and they'll get 0% of the revenue instead of the 50% they were going to get by offering financial aid to a family that can pay half themselves.

I'm pretty sure that the article is just pointing out the state of the economy and how it's affecting the rich in the US.

I do agree that everyone should have access to education, but that's why the public system is there.

Posted by Delta
I'm not really up on how financial aid works in private schools or the US at all for that matter, but I'd be surprised if this is goverment funded financial aid this article is talking about. I think it's financial aid directly from the schools themselves. (ie/ just the school offering to foot the bill for a certain % of the tuition that the family can't afford, likely from endowments left to the school from past students' parents etc.)

It's in the school's self interest to do so. If they don't offer financial aid, then their enrolement will be down, and they'll get 0% of the revenue instead of the 50% they were going to get by offering financial aid to a family that can pay half themselves.

I'm pretty sure that the article is just pointing out the state of the economy and how it's affecting the rich in the US.

I do agree that everyone should have access to education, but that's why the public system is there.

I see.

Someone tell the author of the article that when they wrote that 40% of the student-body at these private schools qualified for financial aid, they were wrong, its 40% of the rich schools that got money from the governmment.

I see, the schools dont charge enough, 50K is mere peanuts, so they have to ask for financial aid for themselves.
Wow. Amazing.

So if any of you who didnt qualify for financial aid or got the minimum, dont be angry, you see the money that could have gone to you, actually went to the rich private schools, now if that doesnt make you feel better you are fucked.