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美国部分中学发放助学金--您的孩子收到了吗?(双语对照)

2018年03月15日09:00 来源:小站整理
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摘要:泰伯、韦伯和许多其它美国寄宿中学刚发出了录取通知和助学金通知。一些没有被录取或未能获得足够助学金的学生家长们纷纷拿起电话向负责人询问,包括泰伯中学的助学主任兼招生副主任朗先生和韦伯中学招生兼助学主任马歇尔先生。

ERIC LONG dreaded answering his phone this week at Tabor Academy in Marion, Mass., while across the country at the Webb Schools in Claremont, Calif., Leo Marshall let the switchboard screen his calls.

That’s because Tabor, Webb and many other boarding schools in the United States — like private day schools last month — have just sent out acceptance letters and financial aid awards. Some of the parents whose children were not admitted or given enough financial aid took to the phones to ask people like Mr. Long, the director of financial aid and associate director of admissions at Tabor, and Mr. Marshall, the director of admission and financial aid at Webb, what happened.

美国部分中学发放助学金--您的孩子收到了吗?(双语对照)图1

“Everyone who didn’t get the answer they wanted has been calling,” Mr. Long said.

Admission to the country’s top preparatory high schools has always been fiercely competitive. But today, with the price of some private boarding schools like Tabor topping $50,000 a year, affluent families are also lining up for aid — and sometimes shutting out those further down the income ladder. The reality has affected the whole philosophy behind financial aid.

“We used to be trying to open our doors to all students,” said Mr. Marshall, who has worked at independent schools for nearly four decades. “Now, it’s ‘Who can afford us?’ ”

That’s not many families. After paying $200,000 for four years of boarding school, parents are looking at another $200,000 or more for college. And that is for one child.

The magnitude of these costs mean that even parents with annual incomes of more than $300,000 are applying for financial aid and receiving it. Both Tabor and Webb said that about a third of students received aid.

If you were one of those families denied financial aid this week, or received less than you expected, there are generally complicated, if painful, reasons.

At Tabor, for example, a ranking system — generally unknown to parents — helps administrators make the hard choices. Mr. Long said Tabor had a panel that reviews all applications and assigns a number value from one to 10 to each student. That number encompasses grades, test scores, teacher evaluations and athletic prowess but also includes character traits. It not only determines whether students will be admitted but also plays a role in how much financial aid they receive.

Students who receive the top score, generally around a 9.2 or 9.3, are the brightest; they will get in and get funded, Mr. Long said.

The parents’ ability to pay, he said, starts to get factored in around 7.5. These are the solid students at the school. Below that rating, it becomes tougher for students to get the aid they need to attend. Students with sixes, he said, would “do a nice job” but they’re competing with similar sixes whose parents can pay. Those with fives will struggle at the school, but if they have a sought-after skill, like being a great hockey player, that could improve both admission and financial aid chances.

“If there’s a 6.8 who applied for financial aid, you want to give that application a good read. They’re tough to fund. If he gets bumped up to a 7.2, that saves him.”

If this comes as a surprise to parents, it shouldn’t, said admissions advisers. Schools are trying to create diverse communities of students, but they also need money to operate.

“Prepare to be told no,” said Brian Fisher, partner at AdmissionsQuest, a consultant. “One of the things that people don’t understand is that private school financial aid is totally different from college financial aid.”

One of the mistakes parents make is thinking that standardized financial aid forms that list a family’s assets, debts and expenses tell the whole story. Aid officers said they need to know more about a family.

“Someone who is making a modest income of $130,000 could almost qualify for everything,” Mr. Marshall said. “Someone making $350,000 could qualify for a lot. But I could show you someone making $200,000 who wouldn’t qualify for much.”

In that instance, the higher earner could be paying off medical or law school debt, while the other could have parents who could pay the tuition for their grandchildren.

Not all debt is the same. Mr. Marshall said he did not look favorably on a family with $100,000 in credit card debt but was more sympathetic to a family that has run up medical debt or is paying for an elderly relative to live with them.

The same goes for self-employed people who are able to lower their taxable income through deductions, business expenses and retirement savings. It is legal and good tax planning, for example, to put a spouse on the payroll for the purpose of putting that salary entirely into a tax-deferred retirement account. But a school is going to say that money could have been used to pay tuition.

A child’s college savings can also be fair game. “Its frustrating for us to see they have $100,000 in a 529 plan, but they think we can help them,” Mr. Marshall said. If the money isn’t tied up in such a plan, his school expects one-eighth of college savings to be available toward a ninth-grader’s tuition.

Parents’ lifestyle matters. In some cases, where parents have contested an award, Mr. Marshall said he has gone so far as to ask them to show him a monthly budget.

“We had a family spend $20,000 on volleyball camp that summer and they applied,” he said, reeling off a list of other summer programs, from trips to France to $18,000 in tennis lessons.

“The family is responsible for paying for tuition, not the school,” he said. “We have to have some confidence the family is doing everything possible to pay for tuition before we step in, because our resources are limited.”

Mr. Marshall said the toughest decisions were not over families that needed a little aid — or thought they did — but over deserving children whose parents had no ability to pay.

“If you have eight great kids from inner-city L.A., you want to fund them, but at $50,000 a year that’s $400,000,” he said. “You want to help them, but you just can’t. It’s painful.”

These problems are not confined to boarding schools. Top day schools face similar choices.

In the more affluent areas, parents sometimes need a reminder of what constitutes need. “You cannot be a member of a country club,” said Molly King, head of Greenwich Academy, a prestigious all-girls school from prekindergarten to 12th grade. “You shouldn’t have a second property, a boat, expensive vacations.”

She added, “While there are people who have suffered reversals, I think they’re surprised how high the threshold is for demonstrated need. They have expensive homes. We’d say you have significant borrowing power against your home.”

Yet Mrs. King said her school had increased its financial aid budget each year since the 2008 recession. It covers 25 percent of students.

The percentage of students on financial aid at day schools nationally is lower than at boarding schools, but the tuitions are also lower, generally under $40,000 a year.

But even when parents clearly need help, schools can do only so much. “In the ninth grade, well over half of our applicants need money,” said Geoff Bird, director of financial aid at Harvard-Westlake, a top day school in Los Angeles. “We try to look at the kids who are going to bring us the most and benefit the most.”

The school’s financial aid budget, about $8.5 million a year, goes to only 18 percent of students, he said.

Contesting awards is tough. Administrators said it’s a bad idea for parents to tell a financial aid director that another school gave them more aid. “That’s death,” Mr. Marshall said. But writing a letter explaining what the school might have overlooked could work.

本周,马萨诸塞州马里恩市泰伯中学(Tabor Academy)的埃里克·朗(Eric Long)很怕接电话。与此同时,在美国的另一边,加州克莱尔蒙特市韦伯中学(Webb Schools)的利奥·马歇尔(Leo Marshall)则让总机过滤来电。

这与上个月发生在各家私立走读学校的情况类似,原因是泰伯、韦伯和许多其它美国寄宿中学刚发出了录取通知和助学金通知。一些没有被录取或未能获得足够助学金的学生家长们纷纷拿起电话向负责人询问,包括泰伯中学的助学主任兼招生副主任朗先生和韦伯中学招生兼助学主任马歇尔先生。

“没有得到满意答案的家长们不断地打来电话,”朗先生说。

长期以来,美国顶尖预备高中的录取竞争都极其激烈。但如今,由于包括泰伯在内的一些私立寄宿学校的学费突破了每年5万美元大关,富裕家庭也开始排队申请助学金——有时家境贫困的学生甚至因此完全不得门而入。这样的现状完全破坏了助学金的宗旨。

“我们曾试图向所有学生敞开大门,”在私立学校工作近40年的马歇尔先生说。“现在却变成了‘谁能读得起我们的学校?’”

这样的家庭并不多。在付完四年高中20万美元的学费后,家长们还要承担不少于20万美元的大学学费。这还只是一个孩子的开支。

这样数量级的费用意味着,连父母年收入超过30万美元的学生也在申请助学金,并且能申请得到。泰伯中学和韦伯中学均表示,它们三分之一的学生拿到了助学金。

如果助学金申请被驳回或少于预期,其原因通常是复杂的,甚至是令人痛苦的。

拿泰伯中学来说,学校有一套不为家长所知的排名系统,用来帮助招生人员做出艰难的选择。朗先生说,泰伯有一个评估所有申请者的专门小组,对每位申请者从1到10打分。该分值包含成绩、考试分数、教师评估和体育表现,同时也涉及品格特质。它不仅决定了学生是否能被录取,也对助学金的多少起着重要作用。

朗先生说,得分最高的学生(一般为9.2或9.3分)情况是最明朗的,学校会录取他们并提供奖学金。

他说,当得分在7.5分左右时,学校就开始考虑家长的支付能力。这个区间的学生在校学习勤奋。得分低于7.5的学生若想获得上学所需的全部助学金,则困难一些。至于6分的学生,他说,“还不错”,但学校会把他们和能够承担学费的学生(同样为6分)进行权衡。那些只能拿5分的学生日子就不好过了,不过,如果他们拥有一项备受追捧的技能,比如是一名出色的冰球选手,录取和助学金的机率会大大增加。

“如果一位得分6.8的学生申请了助学金,招生人员得仔细读一下申请。资助他们难度很大。但如果他能上升到7.2分,就有救了。”

招生顾问说,家长们不应对此觉得惊讶。美国各大中学一直在为生源的多样性而努力,但它们也需要资金维持运营。

“要对被拒绝有准备,”教育咨询网站AdmissionsQuest合伙人兼顾问布莱恩·费希尔(Brian Fisher)说。“人们不理解的是,私立学校的助学金与大学助学金完全不同。”

家长们犯的一个错误是,以为提供一份标准助学金申请,填上家庭资产、负债和开支信息的表就可以了。但助学金审核员说,他们需要对申请者家庭有更多的了解。

“一个年收入13万美元中等家庭的孩子几乎有资格获得学校的一切资助,”马歇尔先生说,“年收入35万美元家庭的学生有资格得到许多资助。但也有年收入20万美元家庭的孩子只能拿到很少的补助。”

在这个例子里,收入较高的家庭可能在还医学院或法学院的贷款,而父母收入较低的申请者之所以没有得到很多补助可能是因为有富足的祖父母或外祖父母能帮忙付学费。

并不是所有的负债都是相同的。马歇尔先生说,相比信用卡里欠着10万美元的人,他更同情欠着医药费或赡养年老亲人的家庭。

同样情况的还有自由职业者,他们可以通过扣减项目、营业开支和退休储蓄减少应税所得。这样的做法不仅合法,而且是好的纳税计划,例如,把配偶的名字加入工资单,以达到把工资完全缴入延迟交税退休账户的目的。但学校会说,家长本可以把这些钱用来交学费。

孩子的大学储备金也是一种策略。“有些家长往529大学储蓄计划里存了10万美元,却希望得到我们中学的学费资助,这令人很失望,”马歇尔先生说。如果他们没有把钱投到这样的计划里,他们学校八分之一学生的大学储备金可以用来交九年级学生的学费。

家长的生活方式也对助学金申领有影响。在一些情况下,当大家都争夺同一个助学金名额时,马歇尔先生说他要求家长们出示家庭的每月预算。

“有一个家庭在夏天花了2万美元参加排球训练营,他们也申请了助学金,”他说。他还列举了一长串其它家庭的夏季安排,包括去法国旅游和1.8万美元的网球课等等。

“对学费负责的应该是家长,而不是学校,”他说,“在我们参与资助之前,我们应当确定家长们已经为承担学费付出了所有的努力,毕竟我们的资源有限。”

马歇尔先生说,最难的决定不是给只需要很少资助(或那些认为只需要很少资助)的家庭提供帮助,而是对于那些应该录取,家长却无力支付的孩子们,是否该给予资助。

“如果你有8位来自洛杉矶的优秀贫困生,你希望资助他们,但每人5万美元一年就意味着每年要发放40万美元助学金,”他说,“你很想帮助他们,但真的无能为力。这非常令人痛苦。”

这些问题并不是寄宿学校特有的。顶尖走读学校也面临类似的抉择。

而在更富裕的地方,有时候学校需要提醒家长申请助学金时有哪些事情不能做。“你不能加入乡村俱乐部,不能有第二处房产,游艇或者一掷千金去度假。”久负盛名的女子学校格林威治学院(Greenwich Academy)校长莫利·金(Molly King)说。该校课程涵盖学前教育到12年级。

她补充说:“虽然有些家庭的财务状况可能出现恶化,但他们看到上述不能做的限制时,会惊讶地认为门槛太高。他们有豪华的住宅。但我们会说,你们有这么好的房子是可以贷到很多款的。”

不过,金女士也说,自2008年经济衰退以来,学校每年都在增加助学金预算,目前已经覆盖了学校25%的学生。

在全美,走读学校接受助学金的学生比例低于寄宿学校,但他们的学费也相对低一些,一般不超过每年4万美元。

但即使对于明显需要帮助的家长,学校能做的也有限。“在九年级,我们半数的申请者都得到了资助,”洛杉矶顶尖走读学校哈佛西湖中学(Harvard-Westlake)助学处主任杰夫·伯德(Geoff Bird)说,“我们努力帮助那些能够给学校带来最多收获和最大益处的学生。”

他说,哈佛西湖中学的助学金预算约为每年850万美元,但只发放给18%的学生。

助学金的竞争是很激烈的。招生官员说,向一位助学主任说另一所学校提供的助学金更高这样的做法并不明智。“这是条死路,”马歇尔先生说。如果给学校写封信,解释他们可能没有注意到的信息倒可能会有效果。

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