Leveraging Financial Aid

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Leveraging financial aid is a commitment to enhancing financial aid to make an independent school education sustainable for current students and accessible/affordable to new students. To ensure its financial aid sustainability, a school will apply sound financial planning and management, investigate and develop additional non-tuition revenue sources, and promote a culture of philanthropy within the community that will support a school’s commitment to a healthy financial aid program to attract and retain mission-appropriate students.

Establish Guidelines and Policies:

  • Survey families to get actual data about income ranges
  • Track awards by size and income band to avoid middle class squeeze
  • Work closely with Boards
  • Give merit awards
  • Are we need-blind no longer? Update principles of good practice
  • Remain need sensitive and need aware
  • Take an “econometrics” approach (20 years – yield bands, income bands)
  • Clearly articulate what the financial aid policy means: “We want to be clear that applying for financial aid means you are applying for a finite amount of dollars; won’t accept you if we can’t fund you.”
  • Carry tuition insurance
  • Finish with returning students by early February; know exactly what is left for new students
  • Partner with the development office; have students communicate with the benefactor of an endowed scholarship
  • Establish boarding/day + sibling policies (especially for multi-level schools)
  • Put CPA on retainer to help
  • View the provision of aid not through a “diversity” lens but through an “access” lens 

Help Educate Families:

  • Conduct financial aid webinars that include mock filling out of applications
  • SSS tutoring
  • Develop an affordability brochure
  • Establish an early priority deadline for returning families
  • Provide clause in letter reminding families about the confidentiality of the award
  • Establish clear guidelines (like colleges) about a student’s academic performance vis-à-vis financial aid

Understand that Financial Aid Doesn’t End with Tuition:

  • Provide stipend for students for necessary items (class trips, etc.); stipend differs by grade level; stipend funded through faculty gift
  • Establish an expendable fund, which may or may not come out of the financial aid budget, for laundry, clothes, bus tickets, etc.
  • Raise and maintain a 100K “equity fund” for extras

RELATED RESOURCES

A sample “affordability brochure” from Stevenson School (CA).

Lakeside School (WA) developed a financial aid calculator for families. Based on family size and income range, the estimator reports the average tuition for current Lakeside families receiving financial aid with similar characteristics.

Like most schools, St. Mark's School of Texas is facing a growing challenge related to supplemental expenses. They communicate policies each year to their financial aid community. A copy of that memo (mailed late each summer) is provided.  

Erdmann, David. “The Science of Enrollment, the Art of Admission, the Business of Financial Aid.” Independent School magazine, Winter 2008.  

Tuition Discounting: A Discussion for Independent Schools.  Stephen Robinson, President, Southern Association of Independent Schools, February 15, 2009.

Pat Bassett, President, NAIS – The Value of Data Markers in Your Financial Planning(Bassett Blog - October 1, 2007).

Evans, Robert. “Surviving and Thriving in Hard Times.” Independent School magazine, Fall 2008.  

Bassett, Patrick. “A Game-Changing Model for Financially Stable Schools.” Independent School magazine, Spring 2010.  

Davis, Donna. “Sliding Scales & Sibling Discounts: Alternative Financial Aid.” Net Assets magazine (NBOA), Winter 2010.  

In God We Trust…Everyone Else Must Bring Data!  By Mike Szydlowski, Director of Financial Aid, Woodberry Forest School (VA). Memberanda, Back-to School 2010 (Vol. 28, No. 1), p. 13.  

Host a family financial aid night to educate families about the financial aid process. SSS provides a useful PowerPoint template for schools and groups of schools to use.