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$75,000/yr for high school prep?

I'm not excited for our little Buffy to rub shoulders with some trailer trash misogynist JD Vance Wanabee from West Virginia.


More Elite Prep Schools Are Offering a Free Ride for the Middle Class

Boarding school Deerfield Academy joins a growing number of prestigious private schools in setting up a new free-tuition program

By Sara Randazzo, WSJ

Sept. 12, 2024 1:01 pm ET


Elite private schools want to appeal to more students, so some are making school free for families whose incomes reach into the low six figures.


The latest to do so is Deerfield Academy, a Massachusetts boarding school that is set to start giving a free ride to any admitted U.S. student whose family earns less than $150,000 a year, almost double the median U.S. household income. For domestic families earning more than that, tuition will no longer go beyond 10% of their income, Deerfield is announcing on Thursday.


Deerfield’s changes are a recognition that many families can’t pay the full freight of nearly $74,500 a year it charges for tuition and other fees to live on its centuries-old western Massachusetts campus, where blazer-clad students routinely dine together with faculty in a largely cellphone-free environment. Deerfield ranks among the country’s most prestigious boarding schools, with 650 students in grades nine through 12.


For Deerfield and other schools, recruiting diverse students—along racial, ethnic, geographic and socioeconomic lines—helps expand access to academic and athletic programs that routinely land students at elite colleges. It also gently punctures the rarefied bubble of boarding and private schools, benefiting wealthier students who may have had little exposure to peers from other backgrounds.


“There are a lot of families out there who aren’t even considering a school like Deerfield because they believe it’s just simply out of reach for them,” said John Austin, the head of school. “We want to change that perception.” Right now, 60% of Deerfield’s families pay full price, the school said.


Programs that cover all expenses or at least full tuition for lower- and middle-income students have become more common at selective colleges, including Stanford University, Harvard University and Princeton University. They’ve made the schools somewhat more affordable and accessible to a wider swath of students—particularly those whose families earn in the low six figures. But many campuses remain dominated by wealthier students.


A wider group of students

Free-ride programs have been slower to catch on at private K-12 schools, which often have tighter finances and smaller endowments. Two boarding schools have had such programs for years: Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, which offers free tuition for those making under $125,000, and Groton School in Massachusetts, which has a cap of $80,000. Last month, the Brearley School, an all-girls K-12 school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, said it would offer free tuition for families making $100,000 or less.


Even without stated programs, private K-12 schools across the country have expanded financial aid as a way to both widen access and to help families who already know about the schools live within their means. The vast majority of Americans attend public schools.


“The sticker price you see isn’t always the price you’ll pay,” said Mark Mitchell, the vice president for access and affordability at the National Association of Independent Schools. “One thing I always tell parents is to consider price last, not first.”


In the past school year, 25.6% of students at independent schools—a subset of private schools, typically nonreligious—received financial aid, including 43% of boarding-school students, according to NAIS. The median amount of financial aid given was nearly $12,900 at day schools, compared to median tuition of $32,300. At boarding schools, median aid hit around $34,000 compared to median tuition of $69,700.


Schools also have limits and must undergo a complicated calculus of how many students they can let in at lower prices.


“Schools have a pretty fixed budget on how much they can discount to still keep the lights on,” said Alisa Evans, the chief executive of Mission Enrollment, which helps private schools manage their financial aid.


Schools ‘torn asunder’

Boarding school seemed unfathomable to Erin Holland, a mother of three who works in packaged-good sales in Charlotte, N.C., and grew up in Ohio attending public schools.


“I said, ‘We are not those people,’” Holland said. But when her oldest son became so invested in competitive hockey that they were traveling out of state for games much of the season, she agreed to let him research prep schools.


She and her husband ended up sending two sons and a daughter to Deerfield. The school offered financial aid that made the price comparable to what they were already paying in hockey travel and at their local Catholic school. Holland said applying for aid each year was stressful, raising worries about whether they’d have money to send their children, now in college, home for Christmas.


The new policy capping tuition at 10% of income would have been a huge relief, Holland said. “It’s transparency and not this secret happening behind closed doors,” she said.


Deerfield, with roots dating back to 1797 and an endowment valued at $920 million, aims to raise another $90 million to help pay for aid. The school already touts its ability to meet most financial needs of admitted families, and this year it says 48 students are paying nothing to attend.


Austin, the school head, said Deerfield tries to create an environment where students from vastly different backgrounds can learn from one another. “If you look across the country, schools and colleges are being torn asunder,” he said, “living through this moment of polarization, politicization and high conflict.”


The richer financial aid isn’t being driven by a need to attract more students, Austin said. The school had more than 2,000 applicants for the current academic year, higher than in prepandemic years, and an admit rate of 17%.


Exeter, one of the country’s best-known boarding schools, said its financial-aid program has helped expand student diversity across racial, socioeconomic and geographic lines. Around 14% of students now receive free tuition, including those under its income-cap program, which began in 2007.


Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com

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