Optimize Financial Aid to Shape Your Independent School’s Student Body

Most independent schools do not fully utilize financial aid as a lever to help shape their classes. This brief outlines how independent K-12 schools can employ aid as a tool to enroll the racially and socio-economically diverse classes they seek.

Most independent schools view financial aid as a mechanism for making their institution affordable to as much of the applicant pool as is needed to fill the seats in each class. But pricing and aid strategy should be optimized to balance toward two specific ends:

Maximizing net tuition revenue from the available pool of applicants

Achieving a spectrum of diversity throughout the student body to advance the school’s mission

Through our research we have found that most independent schools do not fully utilize financial aid as a lever to help shape their classes. Our purpose in creating this resource is to show schools how to employ aid as a tool—not view it as expense—to enroll the racially and socio-economically diverse classes they seek in an effort to produce the well-rounded leaders of tomorrow.

The six steps of optimizing financial aid

To take advantage of the COVID “moment” when many public-school families are considering independent schools for the first time, school leaders must approach their financial aid policy with a clear strategy to enroll more diverse and middle-income families.

Properly conducting financial aid optimization requires to independent schools to prepare, analyze, and act on your enrollment data. This includes six key components:

Set enrollment goals: Your institution must be clear about enrollment goals. These goals must be specific, guide trade-offs as the school sets aid policy, and have clear timelines. Adopt a strategic mentality: Think of how financial aid can help your institution to…