How do schools design scholership amounts?

JAWSCIENCE

Sun, Mar 10 2013, 10:30 am

Unless you post the name of the schools and how many kids you have at each you won't get a meaningful answer. Every school does this differently. Some are OK with you having retirement savings. Some will say you need to take out all that money and pay it to them. Some will give generous sibling scholarships but if you have kids of the same gender that school services in another school that will not even consider the fact that you have those tuitions to pay. Some go so far as to tell parents to take Tomchei Shabbos packages and then give the saved grocery money to the school. So yeah, we can't tell you how your school is doing the calculation. Just know that many, many people struggle too.

amother

Sun, Mar 10 2013, 10:39 am

My dh is on the tuition assistance board of a local boys school.
they don't 'decide on a price'. the tuition is the 'price' and its based on their costs and they try not to raise it much year to year, and they stay within the range of local yeshiva tuitions.
when a family applies for assistance they submit the application and all required paperwork. that is all reviewed by the board (the board members are not privy to the family's name). if there are discrepancies (like major vacations, home renovations, huge salaries, savings and investments - it happens!) then the family is denied outright.
the rest of the applications are looked at as part of a whole. how many other families applied, how much funding is available and how this particular families need measures next to the needs of other families. it could happen that one year a family gets tuition assistance because there is a big donor and the next year they dont get so much assistance because 12 other fathers lost their jobs or three divorcees are not getting anything from their ex's. stuff like that
they also speak to the other school's your kids are in, sometimes one school won't give anything hoping that another school will give you a bigger break. the schools work those things out between themselves (or try to, not every school is as willing).
as far as the actual dollar amount of tuition assistance that is given, well, I dont know if there is a formula or its a case by case thing. I do know that the financial administrator of this school has said 'you should pay at least as much tuition as your car leases'. Sometimes (and I dont mean you obviously) people have a funny idea of what is affordable and what is not (3 foreign car leases = affordable, yeshiva tuition = not affordable)
but almost everyone I know is paying more than they can afford. tuition is crazy.