Online Information Session - Scholarship Aid

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining me for this morning's scholarship aid information session from the Lawrenceville School.

We're going to wait about another minute for folks to come in.

While we wait, why don't we just put in the chat? I see you're already chatting.

Why don't we just say maybe where we're all from so we can see where folks are tuning in from this morning?

I'm here right on campus at the Lawrenceville School in the Mackenzie Administration Building. We're doing our last Saturday of on campus interviews today. So I had an interview this morning and now I'm happy to just speak with you all about scholarship aid and the scholarship aid process at Lawrenceville.

Alright, it's now.

Two after after our start time, so 1032 and we will get started.

Thank you again for for joining me this morning.

To begin, I will just introduce myself. My name is Lauren Gold. I am the Director of Scholarship Aid here at Lawrenceville. I've been at Lawrenceville for eight years. I'm originally from California and I went to boarding school myself and it truly changed my life.

So about eight years ago I came to Lawrenceville. I now live on campus with my family. I live in one of our houses called Stanley House. I have 7 advisees who are all in Stanley. I also coach volleyball and softball. So like all the faculty members here, I wear many different hats. Today I'm going to talk mostly about scholarship aid and my role as a director of scholarship aid and leading that process in that committee.

I will also say that we are gonna record today's session.

So please feel free to ask questions, we'll have time for that. At the end, everything will be recorded and then I'll put it up on our website for you to see later if you want to go back in and review anything.

Awesome. Thank you all for tuning in. It looks like we're from all over the US and all over the world, which is really, really exciting. So just to get started, here are the goals of the scholarship aid office and I'll get into each of these as we go through these slides. I'm going to talk for probably about 1520 minutes this morning and then open it up for for Q&A as I mentioned so.

First, you know our main goal is access and affordability and making sure Lawrenceville is truly a possibility for all students and families applying. Secondly, making sure the process that you go through to apply for scholarship aid at Lawrenceville is as clear as possible. It's a big process and I know that. So hopefully this will help clear up any questions as as we go through it. And then finally working towards equity of experience and communication.

To families who are here at Lawrenceville who are on aid making sure they're able to take advantage of all that Lawrenceville has to offer.

So just to get started, I'm gonna kind of frame our conversation today with some numbers and these this is.

Just to let you know how the scholarship aid kind of budget for this year, the amount of scholarship aid that Lawrenceville has dedicated to make sure that families and students can come and experience Lawrenceville, it's a pretty big number, $16 million this year awarded. Again, these are some stats and what I hope you take away from this is just seeing the dedication that Lawrenceville has to make sure.

That students are able to experience Lawrenceville, whose families might not be able to pay the full tuition.

We are committed and have been for literally decades to make sure that hundreds of families and students come to Lawrenceville and experience this amazing education.

So again, this is just to kind of ground you in the scholarship aid that happens here at Lawrenceville. As you can see at the top, all aid is need based and that's why you'll go through the Clarity application so that the scholarship aid committee can assess each family's financial need for grants to be able to come to Lawrenceville. And that leads me to my second piece that's important for you to know. All aid at Lawrenceville are grants. There are no loans at Lawrenceville and that's different than higher education here in the States.

And important for you to understand that you won't have to pay back any of the grants that you receive to come to Lawrenceville. So those are two kind of important pieces to understand. Everything is need based. There's no merit aid here at Lawrenceville. It's all based on need and that everything is grants.

So next we're gonna move into access and affordability. This is kind of that first, that first goal and pillar of the scholarship aid office. So first this, this chart here explains the the family income of families who are on aid here at Lawrenceville. So on the left you can see boarding families and the breakdown of income levels of aid at Lawrenceville and this really gets at the affordability piece.

So we want families to understand that we have folks here at Lawrenceville who are on scholarship aid who truly, umm, come from a range of financial backgrounds and family incomes, for example for boarding families.

About 70% of boarding families who receive scholarship aid at Lawrenceville make over $125,000 a year, so that's pretty significant salaries and incomes for those families.

But with our price tag of about $76,000 for boarding, they still certainly qualify for a scholarship aid and receive that. You can see again the range, both on the boarding and day side of family incomes who receive aid here at Lawrenceville.

OK, a little bit more about this access and affordability. Again, the goal here is to just show Lawrenceville's commitment to making sure that our school and the opportunities here are accessible to families across the income spectrum and across many, many different backgrounds. As I said before, every year there are hundreds of families who come to Lawrenceville who would not normally be able to afford it. So please don't let the sticker price shock you.

We are committed to scholarship aid, as you can see from the numbers, and we will continue to be. Therefore, it's important that if you think there's any chance that your family might need scholarship aid over your child's time at Lawrenceville, you apply for that at the point of admission. So I think of it as, as your student is working on their application, that filling out the Gateway application, you as parents can be working on the Clarity application we'll get into.

More about the application later, but both of those are due on January 15th.

Returning families do reapply for aid each year, but don't let this scare you. The vast majority of families get the exact same package or a very, very similar grant package each year. But we understand that sometimes families financial circumstances change and we want to be able to respond to that. So you know, if there's something like a job loss or an older sibling going off to college, that can significantly.

Impact your family's financial picture year to year, and so that's why families have the opportunity to.

Reapply for aid each year and so the committee can take that information into account.

Alright. And so then once you apply kind of how does the scholarship aid committee determine the level of aid each family gets. So here is a little bit about our methodology. So income is the biggest factor that's taken into consideration. But we also look at family assets where you live, the number of students who are in tuition, charging schools such as college, how big your family is, which kind of take all of those pieces into account.

To come up with what's called an EFC or the Estimated family Contribution, also sometimes called suggested tuition. And then we take our cost of attendance. So how much it it the tuition is here at Lawrenceville and we subtract what the family is able to pay the EFC and then we make up the difference with grants, with those scholarship aid grants.

So that's kind of a general overview of how the methodology works for the scholarship aid committee in determining each family's grant.

Alright, now we're gonna get a little bit into the process of how to apply and the way that we apply at Lawrenceville is through clarity. So you've probably seen emails come through certainly on our website.

All about going to the Clarity application, so.

You can click on Clarity and you create an application using.

Like an e-mail address that you already have, you'll fill out some kind of basic financial information, questions, you know, do you rent or own your home? Do you have any vehicles? That sort of thing. And then you'll complete a you'll complete a form.

Where clarity will actually.

IRS sorry. We'll send your tax returns over to Clarity, and from there we'll be able to verify things like income and retirement and assets and stuff like that.

So as you work through your CLARITY application and you hear from us from the scholarship aid committee, this is just some important vocabulary that you might see, as I mentioned the EFC Estimated Family Contribution or sometimes called suggested tuition.

And then also the grant and that's again your scholarship aid package. So here are some of the questions that you'll see when you first fill out your clarity application. As I said, some some kind of basic information estimate your your income, tell us how much you spend on things like transportation or food and clothing.

And for international students, 'cause I know we have several of those on the.

On the webinar today you will fill out this same application. You will complete these same questions. Obviously you might not have U.S. tax returns.

So you won't fill out the part where clarity gets your tax returns, but you are required to submit taxes or financial verification from your home country. These need to be translated into U.S. dollars and into English.

But that is the way that we verify kind of all of the information such as income and assets.

The year that we require the tax information from is 2022.

So again, umm, if you feel out of clarity application and your fill out US taxes, we will pull your US taxes from 2022.

And if you're international, it's the 2022 year that you'll need to submit your your tax information or financial information for.

Alright, a little bit more insight into our process. Here is just a list of a bunch of tips that you'll that you should keep in mind. So as I mentioned before the deadline of January 15th.

A key is to make sure to use the same name in your Clarity application as you do in the Gateway application. You know. If you have someone named James and Jamie is the nickname, make sure you use the same name for both.

With Clarity, you'll apply once, fill out the form once, and then you can click all the schools you're applying to and the information will be sent directly to those schools. You only have to fill out the form once.

An important kind of security feature because we know that we're asking for a lot of personal information. Please do not send us any tax documents or personal information over e-mail. Clarity is the most secure way to send that information, so you'll have the opportunity to upload documents if you need to.

Right into your Clarity application. If you do upload documents, please make them PDFs. No passwords so so that we can access them. If you're a business owner, you'll need to submit your business tax returns as well as your personal tax returns.

And this this next point is really, really important because I just spend a lot of time talking about numbers, But we know that numbers never paints the full picture of a family's financial circumstance. And so please use the section of the Clarity app for other considerations to let us know what else do we need to take into account? What other?

Factors do you have in your family's life that impacts your financial circumstance. You know share as much as you feel comfortable and that will be helpful for the scholarship aid committee when taking into consideration.

Finally, for any families who are divorced or separated, Lawrenceville believes that it is primarily the biological parents responsibility for paying for the Lawrenceville education. Therefore, if a family is applying for aid, both biological parents do need to fill out a Clarity application if there's some reason that one parent cannot, such as they are incarcerated.

They're no longer with us.

The the custodial parent can contact our office and go through a pretty extensive process to verify that and then the the non custodial parent will not have to fill out a clarity application. This is pretty standard procedure. It's similar to what families have to go through for the college process as well.

So just some last points on the process, which are again kind of how to go about applying the required pieces to apply. And of course the deadline January 15th. As I mentioned before, families do reapply each year for aid and the deadline for returning families to apply for aid is actually December 15th, so coming up next week.

Alright. And now getting into kind of the equity and communication piece will be my kind of last segment of this presentation. So please get those questions going and feel free to add them to the chat. So what can a scholarship aid package include? So first and foremost, scholarship aid will cover part or full tuition or cost of attendance here at Lawrenceville. So that is kind of the first piece.

For some students, it can cover the full cost of attendance plus some additional items, and then you can see those here. This is just a sampling examples of what some of the things that are included. And this gets to the fact that we want all students at Lawrenceville to have an equal experience to be able to truly take advantage of all that Lawrenceville has to offer. And this can mean things like going on.

An international Harkness trip. Or it can mean taking music lessons here during a free period or in the evenings. There's amazing opportunities that are kind of beyond.

The classroom here at Lawrenceville and we want everyone to be able to take advantage of that. So we make a big effort in the Scholarship 8 office to communicate with current families and students to let them know what what is available to them and what they should be thinking about. Kind of throughout the year we send an e-mail and say probably once a term just saying, hey heads up, this is some of the things you might want to be thinking of that is included in your scholarship aid package.

There's also an affinity group on campus for students who are on aid. It's called Big Red on a budget. They meet each Sunday.

And they put, they're actually putting together a guide for students here about just how to navigate through Lawrenceville and what are some of the things that are included with scholarship aid. So that's going to be really, really helpful. And the biggest piece I think that I hope students and families really feel is that here in the scholarship aid office, my door is always open. I'm on the first floor of Mackenzie. It's kind of a main building on campus the students pass through.

And I constantly have students in my office during our breaks, lunch after school, just asking questions, getting clarification, wondering if something can be can be covered. And I encourage that I I want students to come in and ask those questions. I as I mentioned before, I live right on campus, in one of the houses, and so I also sometimes have conversations with students in the dining hall or walking around campus. Again, always working towards that goal of having an equitable experience.

All right. With that, I'm gonna see if there are any questions that have come up during this presentation. I did have a few kind of come in before I got started, so I will. I'll start with those.

A question that comes up you know every week when I do this this presentation.

Is how does applying for scholarship aid impact my admission decision? Are those two processes the same or separate and?

The truth is, is they're really separate. So we have a admission application and that's read and reviewed by the admission committee. And at the same time we have a scholarship aid application through CLARITY. And there's a lot of kind of personal information that is listed in your clarity application that is not, is not meant to be shared widely. So that information stays with a small group in the scholarship aid committee.

That is separate from the admission committee. So we kind of work in our committees separately. At the very end, we do come together to make sure that we're meeting all of the needs of the school, certainly in terms of programmatic and academic and filling the beds and also our budget, but the two processes are pretty separate.

Any other questions that have come in, please put them in the chat now.

Well, while we wait for some of those questions to come in, I'll I'll answer another one that I've received, which is.

Please let me know about the different payment plan options and and this is a good question because regardless of if you're going to be on scholarship aid or not, you will need to pay the tuition.

Amount for your family to Lawrenceville and this is outlined on our scholarship aid website, which if you haven't been to I encourage you to check out. There's a lot of good information there, including the three payment plan options. One is that you pay in one lump sum, another is that you pay in two.

Two installments and then finally we have a monthly payment plan. So all of that is lined outlined on the scholarship aid website.

All right. Next question, Let's see.

OK, does the translation need to be done by a professional translator? So this is for international tax documents. It looks like it doesn't need to be done by an international translator.

It does need to be translated into English and with U.S. dollars.

But it doesn't need to be done professionally. Many people do that just because it's easier with kind of like a specific tax language.

But the important things is that anything that has a number related to it.

That part is translated, I know, at least here in the States, there are several kind of pieces of paper that might just have.

Information, but not like personal financial information that doesn't need to be translated, just the standard.

Kind of, I guess. Instructions that everybody gets those. Those pieces don't need to be translated.

Alright. The question about if there's a limit on the number of seats for scholarship aid, there's not. I mean, we do have a scholarship aid budget, but there's not a limit in the number of seats. As you saw kind of earlier on this year, we awarded about $16,000,000 in scholarship aid.

And kind of how that breaks down and the number of students that will change year to year, there's no kind of set number.

So question about kind of re discussing if.

If a family feels that the suggested tuition is not actually feasible for their family, can you revisit it?

You can certainly if there's been a change in your financial circumstance. We we do want to know about that because we understand that you apply in January, but you'll get your aid package in the spring. And sometimes things like job loss can happen in that in that time or something other significant change in your family's financial circumstance. And if that's the case, we do certainly want to know and we can revisit it.

If there hasn't been a big change in your financial circumstance, there's probably not going to be a big change in your.

Award package, there is an appeals process, but again, the change wouldn't be significant unless there's been a big change in your in your financial circumstance.

Let's see what other questions have come in.

Alright, so question about tax numbers.

So should you do before tax or after tax numbers? I would actually say both. That's helpful information to have both of those pieces.

Any other questions?

I'll pause for a second.

While I do that.

This is the contact information for the scholarship aid office. So you know, I know.

Each family's financial circumstance is very individual and very personal. So if there is something that you want to ask kind of more confidentially, you can certainly e-mail us or call us at this number. I will say, however, the most important thing is to put that information into your scholarship aid application. Put it into your clarity application as much as you feel comfortable.

Because that is the way that the whole scholarship aid committee will be able to see it. We're certainly happy to answer any general questions. Feel free to put those in the chat right now. But here is our contact information Again, It's also on our website.

If you, if you have questions kind of as you're going through the process, I would say you know thinking that we're we're December 9th right now and the application is due in January 15th.

For the Clarity application, it shouldn't take you too long. If you're kind of a standard US, you know, receive US taxes, maybe it'll take 1/2 an hour to get through those questions and sign over your your taxes.

If you're a business owner, or if you need your financial documents translated because you don't file US taxes, that will take some time and I would encourage you to start that process now so you can get all of those documents.

Kind of set up and ready to go for that January 15th deadline, just like on the admission side.

Please do have everything in by January 15th. That's really important for the scholarship aid committee to be able to review applications on time.

Oh, good question about when will we be informed of the amount of a grant or the scholarship aid package? Great question.

So you you apply by January 15th both for admission and scholarship aid, and then on March 10th is the day that you receive the notification of whether you're admitted or not. If you are admitted, you will receive your scholarship aid package right along with your admission letter.

So you know right now it's all done online and then you also get a package in the mail. But you will see your admission letter and right behind that will be your scholarship aid letter and that will outline what the grant is that Lawrenceville is investing in your in your student. It will also outline what.

Tuition amount is that the family is responsible for and it will outline if there are any additional.

Pieces that are included in your scholarship aid award, such as books or travel or something like that.

Any other questions at all?

I'll just pause again. Feel free to ask any questions.

You know about scholarship aid or otherwise. I see some folks are typing right now, so if you have this question, someone else probably does as well.

A question about how the decision will come. So on March 10th it will come right into your admission portal. So you all now have access to an admission portal where you can make sure that all of the pieces of your application are complete. So this will probably be with your students e-mail and login information. And that's where you'll be able to see yes, I've completed all of the pieces of my admission application. That's the same place you'll log back into.

On March 10th to receive your admission decision and again, your scholarship aid information will be right there behind it.

All right. Any last questions?

Is there some good questions today?

Oh, here's a good question. How do you consider tuition payments for siblings at other schools that are not college? Does that impact the expected contribution? Yes, it does. We know that a tuition payment at another Independent School.

Weighs significantly on a family's finances, so we do take that into consideration. We take college into consideration at a higher level because for a couple of reasons. One, colleges tend to be more expensive private colleges.

And to our scholarship, aid is actually far more generous than most colleges are. We understand that most colleges it's a combination of grants and loans, and we are able to be more generous here at Lawrenceville. So we do take both of those pieces into consideration.

There's a question in the application how many students in your family will be attending tuition charging schools next year. So that can mean, again, Independent School K to 12.

I mean college. We do not take Graduate School costs into account, but we do take again K to 12 and undergraduate.

This alright, one more question. Is there any other way that a grant financial aid to help pay the tuition, Is there an opportunity to intern or work at Lawrenceville during the summer? That's a great question so.

While students are here on campus, they're usually pretty busy with all of the fantastic opportunities that you've probably come to learn about about Lawrenceville. But many students who are on aid, or who are not on AID do choose to work in the summer, sometimes usually at home. There are some opportunities to work here on campus as well, but many students get jobs while they're at home on breaks, and certainly over the summer.

And usually that is to help them with like their spending money throughout the school year.

Alright, so another question that came up that I I covered earlier just about is Lawrenceville need blind. So as I said the two processes, admission committee process and the scholarship aid committee, there are two separate committees. So your your student is completing the gateway application that's going to be reviewed by the admission committee.

You as parents are completing the clarity application that's going to be reviewed by the scholarship aid committee and we keep those separate because the whole admission committee doesn't need to know all the, you know, very personal financial information of each family.

So those processes kind of run parallel at the end. We do come together to make sure we're meeting all of the goals of the school in terms of enrollment and programs and budget, but the two processes run pretty separate and parallel.

Alright, so good question. As I mentioned spending money, so this is outlined on our, our website and we estimate about $750 throughout the year for spending money that's that's kind of an estimate. Some students will certainly use more spending money and some will use less. And I can tell you that some students will ask for more from their parents and this is an area back to the question about getting a job.

Where, as I said, many students will work over the summer to save up money to use as they're spending money.

Throughout the year. So for those of you who have visited campus, you know that we're right on a Main Street where there's a pizza place and a Starbucks and an ice cream shop. Students love to go across the street and take advantage of those. So that's where, like, the spending money piece will come into play.

Alright, any last questions?

Alright, well thank you so much everyone for joining me this morning. Hopefully this was helpful information. If you have additional questions, as I said, please do reach out to us over e-mail or the phone. We look forward to hearing from you and helping you through this process. I hope everybody has a wonderful rest of your 2023.

Take care. Bye.