Online Information Session: Scholarship Aid

Good morning. Thank you for joining me this morning to learn about scholarship aid at Lawrenceville. I'm going to wait another minute or so for folks to keep filling in, but just want to say thank you for spending some time with me on your Saturday morning as we near to that January 15th deadline. While we're waiting, I'd love to hear where people are logging in from.

So if you can just put in the chat where where you are right now, it's kind of fun to see the different corners of the globe that people log in from.

All right. First two are coast to Coast, New York, California.

Turkey across the sea locally here in New Jersey.

Awesome.

I always love to do this at the beginning of each um.

Information session, just to again see where people are coming in from. Share that with you. It's a good good like reminder of how people come to us at Lawrenceville from really all over the globe, so.

Let's see. We have the continent of Africa, the continent of Europe all over the US.

Awesome. Thank you.

Alright, well now that we are two after the hour, I'm going to get started.

My name is Lauren Gold and I am the director of scholarship aid here at Lawrenceville, so I oversee the whole scholarship aid process and the scholarship Aid committee here at the school. In addition to that, like all faculty members, I wear a bunch of different hats, so I also Coach JV, volleyball and softball, and I live in Stanley House, which is on the Crescent, so a third and fourth form are sophomore and junior girls.

I live in the house with them. So for any of you who have visited campus or checked out our online tour, other information sessions, you know how much house is a big part of the experience here at Lawrenceville. So I am part of Stanley House. I'm on duty tonight, which means I will be out and about around the house for the evening, getting a feed for when we, all the students, check in at 11 tonight, I think. What are we having? We're going to have some Chinese food, so that should be fun.

OK. So over the next 15 minutes or so, I am going to go through a series of slides. And the goal of these slides are really to highlight these three goals of the scholarship Aid office. And after I go through the slides, they'll be plenty of time for questions and answers at the end. Excuse me, I have the perpetual cold that my kids from daycare bring home. So as I said, as I was saying, as I'm going through these slides, if there's a question that pops into your mind.

Please just put it in the chat I can get address it at the end or you know you could wait till the end to to ask any of your questions. But the three areas we're going to focus on today are access and affordability, making sure the process of applying for scholarship aid at Lawrenceville is as clear as possible. And then finally the equity and communication piece of students and families once they are here at Lawrenceville, I think I should start off by saying.

Here at Lawrenceville, we use the term scholarship aid. Probably a lot of other schools you might be looking at use the term financial aid. I think they are very, very similar. We use the term scholarship aid to highlight the important fact that truly all of the awards that we give are grants and not loans. So unlike like at the college level or at some other schools, you don't have to pay back any of the awards.

That students get when coming to Lawrenceville. So just wanted to highlight that. But in many ways the financial aid and scholarship aid are kind of interchangeable terms.

Um, OK. So this slide is really just to highlight again the school's commitment to scholarship aid, how much we give out this year, the percentage of students who are on aid and and the average grants. The bottom line here is that Lawrenceville is committed to ensuring that students and families who are not normally be able to pay for a Lawrenceville education are able to come here and be a part of this amazing community, take advantage of.

All that we have to offer and contribute and make this Community even better. So again just some numbers to to highlight that.

All right. This the next slide is one that I I typically pause on to to explain because there's usually often questions. So this these two charts are breakdown of the income levels of families who are on scholarship aid at Lawrenceville. The left is boarding and the right is day. But you can see on the boarding side almost 60% of the families who are on scholarship aid here make over $125,000 a year and.

And I say that my policy are because I really want to.

Go back to that first bullet point, the access of an affordability piece that I want you to know that we are have a commitment to making sure Lawrenceville is accessible to families across the income spectrums and making it affordable, making it realistic for families again across the income spectrum. You can see there's plenty of families who make quite large incomes and we are committed to helping to make coming to Lawrenceville affordable.

For that.

Alright, so I'm having to come back to this slide if there are questions, but I just wanted to make sure there's plenty of time here for it.

All right. Continuing with access and affordability.

I I showed you those slides. I showed you the OR I showed you those charts and those those numbers previously because I really don't want the sticker shock of what the cost of Lawrenceville is to dissuade you from applying for admission or from applying for scholarship aid. As I said before, we hope we help hundreds of families each year come to Lawrenceville and and be a part of this community and enrich the community, take advantage of all that we have to offer if.

If there's any chance that your family might need scholarship aid over your time at Lawrenceville, please do apply for it now. Families do reapply for scholarship aid each year that they are at Lawrenceville, and they're award by and large stays the same if your financial picture stays the same, with the reason we have families reapply each year.

Is because.

We recognize that sometimes there are pretty significant changes in financial circumstances for families, a a job loss or a sibling going off to college and having that tuition Bill. And so we want the opportunity each year to adjust the package and oftentimes that means to to help the family again make it affordable if there is some change in financial circumstance, so returning families.

Apply reapply each year. Their deadline is December 15th. They go through the exact same process that you are going through, which I will get to in a minute.

But I should say, by and large, the vast majority of families have a very similar package year to year. It's really going to be the same, barring any big financial change.

All right. Now getting into the process, which I'm sure you are all kind of starting to look at or if you haven't already, it's a it's a pretty extensive process. I always tell parents that while their student is working on their application, you can be working on the financial aid application, so Lawrenceville.

Uses school and student services, which is um.

A third party service to collect all the financial information from families. So if you haven't already, I encourage you to go to SSS, create a login and the first thing that you'll need to do is fill out the parent financial statement. And this is a pretty extensive form to give an overall look at your financial picture.

And they ask questions about income, about assets, about liabilities. And then after you complete that, you need to upload required documents. And for us, for the majority of domestic families that is your 1040 and your W2. For domestic families who own their own business or of a partnership, you need to upload those tax documents. And for international families, obviously you don't have the the US tax documents, but you do.

Need to upload the kind of equivalent from your country translated into English and U.S. dollars, so.

Once you've done the PDFs and uploaded your required materials, you are done. That is your application for financial aid. Then the scholarship aid committee here at Lawrenceville kind of takes all of that information using our methodology, which I'll get into in a little bit and comes up with an estimated family contribution. And this is the amount that based on the information that you've provided, we feel is realistic for your family to contribute.

Towards the Lawrenceville education.

It's worth noting that we feel that it is primarily the biological parents responsibility to pay for their students education.

As such, we do require the PFS and require documents from both parents. If there is a case where one parent is truly out of the picture, you know, deceased, incarcerated, never never met the student. There is a process that families can go through to waive that second parent requirement. But by and large, if the the second parent is that all in the picture of the child's life, they also need to be a part of this.

Financial aid process.

OK, so the scholarship aid committee comes up with the estimated family contribution. We then take the cost of attendance of Lawrenceville, which is about for Borden students, roughly $75,000. We subtract the EFC, let's say we calculate that the family can pay $25,000, then that the remaining $50,000 is what would be provided as a grant from Lawrenceville, a tuition grant. So that is kind of some some of the main terminology that we use.

And just a reminder about how to apply and deadlines. So we're already in January now you've all probably likely inquired at to Lawrenceville, hopefully your students have started or finished their gateway application and then you're going to go through those steps on the SSS website to fill out the parent financial statement and then upload the required materials. All of this is due by January 15th. As I mentioned returning families, it is due on December 15th.

But for you, it's coming up next weekend. Um and again. Just a note about international application applicants below they do you still do need to upload required documents. You also have a required international student financial aid profile, and that can be found on the US website.

Alright, and just some tips now on the process because it is it is a big process. Certainly I've mentioned a lot of these before, but as I said, hopefully you've already logged into s s and got a sense of what you need to provide in terms of information on the form and required documents. Gather those together. An important tip, please use the same name for the student when he or she is applying so if the name.

Is James Smith and the gateway application of the SSO application. Please use James Smith, not Jimmy, not Jamie Smith on the s s application. Similarly, if you have a separated parents filling out two PDFs, please make sure you use the exact same name as well.

Um, you need to upload all of the required materials in PDF format to SSS. We do not accept them over e-mail, and that's for security purposes. SSS has an enhanced security, but you're of course welcome to kind of block out your Social Security numbers or anything else you feel is important to block out. Make sure the PDFs are not password protected, because then of course we can't see them.

And that's.

You know pretty important for those required materials, we are not able to actually look at your, your file, your, your financial aid application until all those pieces are done. We need the parent financial statement, the big form and all the required documents and that's because we use the required documents to verify what you've put in the form in terms of income and assets and that sort of thing. So we won't be able to actually.

Review your financial aid application until both of those pieces are in, so that's really important. Again, the deadline is next Sunday.

So just to to pause here and say, I've talked a lot about numbers and that is a big part of what we do in terms of our calculation. However, I recognize that numbers never tell the full story about a family's financial circumstance and the financial picture. Every family has, you know, different polls and strains on their resources. And to that end, there's a section in the PFS.

It's just like additional considerations or additional information and that's where you can write as much as you feel comfortable about kind of.

Any unique circumstances or anything that you think the committee would be helpful for the committee to know as we get a fuller picture of your family's financial circumstance. So please do take advantage of that.

Alright and now getting into the methodology a little bit as I said I would, so you can see at the top the family income is the biggest driving factor of the estimated family contribution. We also take into account assets, number of students and tuition charging, schools, cost of living, so where where you're from and how big your family is. So those are some of the biggest.

Factors that go into the calculation to come up with the estimated family contribution, as I said.

Uh, since you're all applying for admission at this point, those decisions are released on March 10th. And if your student is accepted with that acceptance at the same time, you will receive the scholarship aid information, so you will receive the full package and explaining kind of what is included in that on March 10th. So you'll kind of know right when right when you get the admission.

Let's see, as I mentioned before, returning families can expect a very similar package year to year and that information goes out when re enrollment goes out each year in February. And just a reminder again, when I'm talking about the scholarship aid grants and scholarship aid package, all right, that's all grants. There's no loans. It's all coming, nothing that your family needs to repay.

Speaking of the scholarship aid package, the scholarship aid covers can cover up to the full cost of attendance, so full cost of tuition.

And then for some students, there's a lot of additional costs that we will also cover, such as travel to and from campus, a computer, help with academic materials and books. We also, there's a lot of opportunities around campus that are discounted based on the percentage of aid that you're on. So we have an amazing series of Harkness travel programs, about a dozen trips that go out all over the world.

Each year, led by Lawrenceville faculty members and Lawrenceville students, one of those is discounted based on percentage of aid, private music lessons, standardized test prep. Down the road. For some students, they get a weekly stipend. If you've been to campus, you know we're right across the street from a bunch of great like, restaurants, pizza shops, bakeries, ice cream. And so having some money to enjoy that with your friends is really, really important. So.

We, you know, for some students, all, all, or some of these additional things are included in your scholarship aid package.

We also have here on campus that an affinity group of students who are on scholarship aid and they're actually putting together, we meet on Sundays. They're putting together this great booklet. It's called Big Red on a budget and just about coming to Lawrenceville and making sure that students know what is available to them as part of the scholarship aid package. And I'm a really, really big fan of that because I want all students and families to know all of these great opportunities and to truly take advantage.

Of them.

I'm here in my office, you know, most of the days I live on campus with my family, and so I'm accessible to students around to answer questions about their their scholarship aid package. And always encourage students to pop by, ask questions, see, you know, hear what's on their mind. The the bottom line is my goal for for this office and for the families who are on scholarship aid is to have as equitable and experience as possible.

Here at Lawrenceville to really be able to take advantage of all of the the great things that that we offer here, so.

Um, with that, as promised, I I talked for about 20 minutes and I now want to encourage you to put in the chat. If you have any questions about anything that I covered, I'm happy to kind of jump into.

At this point, and I will put up our contact information, so if you have a question that's very specific to you or if you need to e-mail, e-mail in after the fact, there's our e-mail and the scholarship aid phone number as well. I'm just going to look through some of these questions.

Um.

The question about international scholarship aid. So we do have a very limited budget for international students. For the most part, they are Davis scholars. If if you haven't heard of that, I encourage you to Google Davis Global scholars and we have.

About 15 students each year that come from all over the globe for to be part of our Davis Scholars program. And we do ask all international students who are applying for aid to fill out the N, the PFS, the International Student Financial profile as well as upload their required documents so that we can get a good sense of their financial picture as well.

Let's see.

Question about the privacy of the documents are uploaded. This is a great question and this is partially why we don't kind of accept the documents ourselves over e-mail S has.

Higher levels of security and login information.

And that's why we have them collected versus as we all know, e-mail is not secure, so that's please do use S to upload everything.

Ohh great question that I can't believe I forgot to mention. So for the required materials.

We require the tax returns from two years ago. So for applying for entry of fall 2023, we required your 2021 tax returns. So in your PF you'll see required materials. Those are your 2021 taxes. Tax returns under additional documents, we ask that you upload your 2020 as well, but.

It's really the 2021 that we will be using to verify.

So question about annual estimated costs beyond the student tuition and annual fees. So you can see there's a table actually on the scholarship aid web page that outlines books.

Like weekly stipend health insurance for international students, any kind of of those extra costs that there might be. So I encourage you to to check that out.

OK, a couple of questions about how does the scholarship aid application interact or impact the admission application at all and I was waiting for this question. I certainly get it every week. The two processes are really separate. So there is just like the two applications are separate as your student submits their application that is then read by members of the admission committee and then goes to.

Admission committee, whereas the Scholarship Aid Committee, the Scholarship aid application is read by members of the Scholarship Aid Committee, discussed at the Scholarship Aid Committee. There's because as we were just talking about there's a lot of sensitive personal information. This admission committee doesn't need to know your financial background. They're really just looking at your the the student and what the the student would bring to the school. So the two processes are.

Very, very separate.

At the very end, we do come together to make sure that we are serving the school well and serving all of our programs, making sure that we we are, you know, doing right by the students and the families and the school. But for the most part, the two processes are are separate until the very, very end.

Um, so is the calculated EFC the final say in what is expected from the family, or are there other considerations? They're absolutely other considerations brought into account. I should also say the the EFC is something that each school, because a lot of schools use SSS. So one of the nice things is you're going to fill out that PFS, upload the required documents once, and then you list all the schools you're applying to and it gets sent out to them.

And then each school is able to adjust the calculation and the methodology to fit the kind of ethos and the philosophy of the school. So each school will have will let you are adapted to, you might have a slightly different.

Scholarship aid package, I think from our peer schools in the 10 schools they're often very, very similar.

But there are also schools out there that like have merit scholarships, and that's completely different. I would say the EFC is a starting point, but then all of those other considerations we certainly do take into account.

So a question about like how do I know if I've uploaded everything correctly if it's not password protected? So you should see you know that it is complete, that it is all set on your end. We will also reach out if we need more information or if we're not able to access your documents. This probably won't be until the end of the month or even next month.

As we get kind of more further into the process. But don't worry, if we need something we will reach out to you.

The communication on admission and financial aid does come at the same time on March 10th. Yep.

Um.

Let's see.

Looks like there's some questions about like pretty specific.

Individual, individual circumstances, again, I think that that is a great the the additional considerations or additional information is a great place to put that kind of personal circumstance so the whole scholarship aid committee can see it. So please, please do use that section of the PFS.

Um, question about if a parent is a student and how that impacts. You know we will take into account many some students certainly like in in higher level like getting a.

Postgraduate degree uh might be earning an income as well, and we'll take that into account certainly.

Any other questions at all?

I'll just pause for one minute.

Do you put? Here's a question. Do you put students on a scholarship aid wait list separate from the admission wait list? Could you be admitted but not offered scholarship aid? No.

The short answer to that is no. We do meet full demonstrated need of all families that we accept. So if you're accepted, you will receive a scholarship aid package along with your acceptance.

And going back to earlier question, I think about the EFC. As I said, most boarding schools at this point use s s and once a family you, you submit everything once and then it goes out to the different schools that you're applying to that you'll list.

And then each school, as I said, can kind of adjust the methodology as they feel appropriate for their school. And that's why I shared a little bit about our methodology, for example, like income is the biggest, biggest factor.

And then we do take into account those other considerations, the 10 schools which are kind of our our biggest peers where we have crossover, we are all need based aid. So those packages tend to look pretty, pretty similar. The estimated family contribution is hopefully pretty similar as well.

And so.

That's all the need based side, which is all that Lawrenceville has in terms of scholarship aid. We do recognize that there are other schools that have merit aid that is not based on a family's ability to pay. That's something that's kind of completely different from what Lawrenceville Lawrenceville does. And so those are kind of two separate buckets. What do you think about financial aid?

OK, so percentage of applicants who are granted scholarships. Roughly about 1/3 of our students are on aid here at Lawrenceville. Any common mistakes in the submission of documentation?

I don't think there is some. There's one common mistake, I think just making sure that the appropriate tax documents are uploaded. That's kind of the biggest thing. A lot of people will get through the PDF, which is a pretty big form, and think, oh, I'm done. But in fact we do need those PDF documents uploaded.

Um, my question about divorced or separated parents. Again, we do require that.

Both biological parents fill out a PDF that can be together on one PDF or if they wanna do it separately it can be two different PFS and then upload required documentation as I said if.

Uh, one of the parents is truly out of the picture and not in the student's life. Has never been in the student's life. You can reach out to our office, you can see the e-mail there and we can walk you through the process for excluding that parent from the from the scholarship aid process. It includes us a written statement, some verification very similar process to again our peer schools and also what would be required at the college.

Level of but by and large, if they're the parent is at all kind of in the student's life, we will need their financial information.

Uh.

Question about like annual income cutoff points, we don't really have a cutoff. There's not, I can't give you a specific number again because there are multiple factors that go into play when looking at families financial kind of picture and coming up with an estimated family contribution. So we truly do need all the information that you send us to be able to come up with that award.

Alright, any last questions?

So SSS login is not related to the Gateway or Sao application. It's something you can get from our tuition and affordability page on the Lawrenceville website.

So for divorce situations, we do, since we do require tax documents, we probably will see, we not probably we will see any household members such as stepparents who file under, you know, file jointly.

Yep, 11040 form for many for most households.

Alright, any other questions at all?

OK. It looks like questions have slowed down. So thank you for taking the half hour this morning to listen and to log in. If you do have any other ones that come up, please just feel free to call or e-mail us and have a great rest of your weekend. Good luck finishing everything up in the next week.

Alright, take care. Bye.