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We are an independent, advertising-supported comparison service. Our goal is to help you make smarter financial decisions by providing you with interactive tools and financial calculators, publishing original and objective content, by enabling you to conduct research and compare information for free - so that you can make financial decisions with confidence.
Bankrate has partnerships with issuers including, but not limited to, American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi and Discover. How We Make Money
The offers that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site, including, for example, the order in which they may appear within the listing categories. But this compensation does not influence the information we publish, or the reviews that you see on this site. We do not include the universe of companies or financial offers that may be available to you. SHARE: January 14, 2009 Heather Liston Bankrate logo The Bankrate promise
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Founded in 1976, Bankrate has a long track record of helping people make smart financial choices. We’ve maintained this reputation for over four decades by demystifying the financial decision-making process and giving people confidence in which actions to take next. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. All of our content is authored by and edited by , who ensure everything we publish is objective, accurate and trustworthy. Our loans reporters and editors focus on the points consumers care about most — the different types of lending options, the best rates, the best lenders, how to pay off debt and more — so you can feel confident when investing your money. Bankrate logo Editorial integrity
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You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers. We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money. Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service. If you have school-age children, investing in their education might well be one of the wisest investments you could make right now. But when money is tight, a private school education may seem more out-of-reach than ever. It need not be. Private education is sometimes considered a luxury, and yet, according to a recent study by the federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics, more than 5 million students in the United States attend nearly 30,000 private elementary and high schools. They can’t all be scions of the super-wealthy. How are they doing it? Although tuitions range from the high four figures to more than $30,000 per year, many, if not most, schools have a firm commitment to making their offerings accessible to a wide variety of families. What’s more, they will often work hard to help make it possible. The primary source of financial assistance for elementary and high schools comes directly from the schools themselves. “Schools distribute their own funds and so there are no ‘oversight’ groups that dictate how they award to families,” says Melvin Rhoden, of School and Student Service for Financial Aid, or SSS. Merit awards are rare, especially in the younger grades. (How do you determine, for example, that one first-grader has more academic potential, or more community service achievements, than another?) Therefore, most schools provide tuition assistance based on some calculation of the families’ ability to pay. They do not, however, do this in consistent ways. A school commitment to aid
It is common that a school will ask all families to show some commitment by paying at least a small portion of the cost themselves, but a few will offer to cover 100 percent of tuition if the family demonstrates sufficient need. Some will go even higher than that by contributing toward books, lunches, transportation, prom tickets and other items, to make sure that a student on aid can participate fully in the school community. Evaluating financial data
The process works like this: Families fill out the Parents’ Financial Statement, or PFS, and submit it directly to SSS through their Web site. The PFS form asks for information similar to what you’d put on your tax return, and includes room for notes and explanations of special situations. SSS runs the data through its proprietary analysis system and arrives at a number called the “Estimated Family Contribution.” It then sends a report, including that number, to any schools the family has identified as recipients. Testing the process waters If you want to fill out the SSS form just to get an indication of what your estimated contribution might be, you can go to the , fill out the PFS and request a “Parent Report” only. In that case, the information will be sent only to you. Later, if you decide you would like one or more schools to receive the information, you just go back to the site and fill out an “Additional Report Request.” The fee to apply is about $12 per school that you want to submit to, but if that represents a hardship, you can request a fee waiver. Another service, Independent School Management’s “” system, allows families to view the financial forms online and practice filling them out, but does not provide any resulting financial information to families. Funding philosophy
There are several reasons for this. One school may specifically use financial aid to fill certain goals — for example, if they have a gender imbalance in a particular grade and need to attract more girls, they might be more generous with aid to a family with girls. Or they may be trying to increase their ethnic or socioeconomic diversity through the strategic use of aid. SHARE: Heather Liston Related Articles