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It's actually a little unfair to pick on Eton in this regard - it has an excellent, and improving, record on financial aid.

My son is a dual US/UK citizen. Yes, Eton is improving its record and financial aid. They've got links now with Boston Latin (oldest grammar school in US), Philips, and other boarding schools. My UK husband, however, also says Eton needs to cough up more. About 20% of students at Eton receive substantial aid compared to Exeter's 45%. Moreover, Exeter, Philips, and other boarding schools in the US offer a total free ride to students whose families make less than $75,000.

Schools like Eton have been exclusive by their nature for a reason. Not everyone goes to Juilliard or London School of Music at a young age like some prodigies do either. I could be wrong but I don't think prodigies or pg kids from poor/er families make up the bulk of the population at somewhere like Eton, Juilliard, Philips, or Exeter since these schools need money to come in and they can't rest on their endowments.

Huh. Now some part of me is tempted to look into sending DD to Exeter. Her grandfather (DH's father) was an Exeter graduate. He was a scholarship student. Of course, if she also needed a scholarhip, I guess they could take this as evidence that this investment in grandpa failed.

I believe that my dd would absolutely thrive at Exeter. If we didn't have such a great situation for her at the public high school here I would very strongly consider it even though I would hate to miss that time every day with her.

Wasn't there also a policy of looking for highly gifted, at risk students for financial aid?

I know a guy who was from serious proverty in Harlem, got a full ride to Andover, from there a full ride to Harvard, then went Harvard law and is a very successful corporate lawyer now. He pays full ride at Andover for his 2 girls.

Well, it's not accurate to consider my kids "at risk," if you're addressing my comment. They're not, and they hardly come from disadvantaged backgrounds, which is why it would be a bit weird to use programs like this. On the other hand, you could look at it another way: DH and I have both chosen to work in fields that are not very financially rewarding because we feel we are of more service to the world that way. So maybe we deserve a break.

But I don't know. We both have expensive private liberal arts college educations and grew up in UMC families (in DH's case, on the lower end of UMC, tending more towards MC; in my case, in the middle of UMC). OTOH, both of us had scholarships, though mine (National Merit) was much larger.

My kids have a very good public high school available to them, so it's not as though we have no options. But DD is kind of a striver. Other than perhaps a lack of superb extracurriculars, which I guess we could work on, I don't really see why she couldn't get in to someplace like Exeter in 9th grade. But there is surely a lot I don't know about this. DH and I were talking about this semi-jokingly last night--would one of these schools mess her up more or less than we are going to in adolescence? (DD is HARD. The teen years will be HARDER. And she is a very, very independent kid. But of course, we would mess her terribly. We live far from New England.)

At Exeter, at least, you don't have to be at risk. We have a relative there now who is on scholarship. Her parents are both university faculty, just not well-paid faculty😐. I think it helped that they do not live in the northeast, so some geographic diversity they were trying to achieve; she is also an athlete. There are still significant costs involved, though (flying home and back for each school break is not exactly cheap, not sure how long they can sustain that, for example).

Yes, we would offer geographic diversity. I did think about the planefare aspect. We have relatives in the area, though, so if DD didn't want to come home every time, she easily could find somewhere to go.

I really doubt we would do this, TBH, and it is not something I would ever have pictured for my kid, but with this particular kid, it's not totally off the table. DS would not want to do it, I don't think. He's a homebody. DD...well, she is just her own thing, and I could see boarding school life being her kind of thing. She LOVES overnight summer camp. Wants to stay for weeks. She also is the kind of kid who can make friends with anybody and is not bothered at all by differences in background. (Although I have to wonder where the limit of that is.)

The list price of Exeter is $47,000 for boarding students. If more students were paying a higher fraction of the list price, the list price could be substantially lower, and more well-off families would consider Exeter. Need-based aid has trade-offs.

Your point being that if there were no scholarship students, it would be a mix of the very rich and the upper-middle class, with more UMC kids being able to go?

In other words, the scholarship kids make it impossible for the UMC kids to go to Exeter?