How does anyone afford seminary?

amother

Green

Sat, Nov 23 2019, 11:25 pm

Sent DD1 2 yrs ago and DD2 is there now. Masa plus seminary scholarship for chinuch families still left us with about 18K to pay- there is also flight, phone, medical insurance... DDs use their own spending money. (They worked in camps, babysat etc. Some girls pay for their own flight and more.) I’ll be honest- we went into debt for it. Some credit card, some home equity loan. DH and I dont regret it for a second. We both went and had a once in a lifetime incredible experience and it is the same for DDs. We live in a community where everyone goes and it is a factor in shidduchim, but I would have done it regardless. There are schools that are known to give very generous scholarships. Your DDs seminary advisor should know about them.

gold21

Sat, Nov 23 2019, 11:53 pm

I didn't go to Israel for seminary- I went half-day to a local place

I knew it would be difficult for my parents to pay for sem in Israel, so why ask them,

and anyway I wasn't particularly interested in living like a child for an additional year, being molded into some idea of what I was supposed to become. I was ready to live like an adult. I wanted to work, make money, and start college.

Also, I didn't care about "fitting in" and "everyone else going". I was 18, a grown up and adult. I had a reliable group of friends and I was comfortable doing what worked for me. And quite a few of my friends went to local seminaries, to allow them to start college. I guess you could say that we were not a group of friends who were used to having life handed to us on a silver platter. We were (and still are) realists. We were ready to be adults.

So I went to a local seminary half day because skipping seminary altogether may have looked strange for purposes of shidduchim.

It worked out BH.

amother

Pearl

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 5:10 am

amother [ Lavender ] wrote:

I'm sorry you feel like the only one who had to do it. Trust me, a lot of girls contributed to seminary in some way.

I know that, that's fine.
But if my mom in on here I need to be super-careful about what I write.

amother

Pearl

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 5:13 am

amother [ Ivory ] wrote:

Maybe the seminary administrators aren't getting rich, but the owners sure are.

So usually the administrators are from the same families as the owners. And no one is getting rich.

amother

Pearl

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 5:13 am

amother [ Mint ] wrote:

I'm curious which school that was.

I looked at Masa website and there were only 2 BY Frum sems on the list (ateres and meor). What about the rest??

It closed a while ago.

amother

Navy

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 8:06 am

amother [ Green ] wrote:

I dont understand how you can be ok going into debt for this.

boysrus

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 9:06 am

amother [ Navy ] wrote:

I dont understand how you can be ok going into debt for this.

there are people who go into debt over regular day school tuition too.
unfortunately.
we regularly have to dip into our HELOC to pay off our tuition bills at the end of the school year Sad

and I would definitely have to do that for seminary.

amother

Navy

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 9:07 am

boysrus wrote:

there are people who go into debt over regular day school tuition too.
unfortunately.
we regularly have to dip into our HELOC to pay off our tuition bills at the end of the school year Sad

and I would definitely have to do that for seminary.

But day school and highschool are mandatory expenses. Seminary isnt!

amother

Ivory

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 9:42 am

amother [ Pearl ] wrote:

So usually the administrators are from the same families as the owners. And no one is getting rich.

Sure they do. I know some personally. They went from being a typical, struggling a bit charedi family to living a very, very luxurious lifestyle. They didn't start the sem for idealistic details, they were very open about this. It was a financial venture, they got backers (investors), hired talented people, within a few years it became very profitable
and now they have become quite wealthy.
Not to go into details because of identifying info.
If it wasn't potentially so profitable why do you think so many are constantly bring opened? Sure, not all succeed but for those that take off, it produces a very nice profit.

Librarian

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 10:04 am

amother [ Ivory ] wrote:

Good for them! No different than any other industry. Like everyone keeps saying, Seminary is not a necessity.

amother

Cerulean

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 1:09 pm

my daughter worked throughout high school to help pay towards seminary. plus you pick a seminary who will work with you financially. girls also apply through colleges (Touro); not sure how that works, but you can find out.
hatzlocha!

amother

Lavender

Sun, Nov 24 2019, 3:04 pm

amother [ Cerulean ] wrote:

Applying through a college can be great but IIRC you have to go to that college for at least a semester or two before they'll release the credits. It's nothing sinister on their part, it's so that they won't be seen as a diploma mill, there were problems some years ago.

Goldie613

Mon, Nov 25 2019, 7:22 pm

Does anyone nowadays go to NY instead of Israel? I know thirty years ago you had girls in the Brooklyn seminaries who dormed because they were from out of town. Not sure if that's a thing today, but if it is, it's got to be a lot cheaper.

Goldie613

Mon, Nov 25 2019, 7:26 pm

Can someone explain what masa is? I see a lot of posters on this thread mentioned it. I gather it's some type of financial assistance program, but I'm not familiar with it. Thanks