AFFORD

Families that choose not to apply for Indexed Tuition should expect to contribute the maximum tuition per student.

The Admissions Office will send each interested family a FAST application link and voucher. Applications should be completed and documentation submitted within two weeks of receiving the voucher. The Indexed Tuition application will collect financial information that will be reviewed by the Indexed Tuition Committee. 

Offers of admission will include an Enrollment Contract stating the tuition determination. These letters will be emailed in March to families who applied by the January deadline. 

We also recognize that your family may need more clarity regarding its expected family contribution before proceeding with the application process: if so, please do not hesitate to contact the tuition committee at (tuition@thadenschool.org) for an individual consultation. Please remember that a Thaden education is often more affordable than many families expect.

All families may apply for Indexed Tuition. In determining each family’s tuition, many factors will be considered, including but not limited to household income, family size, number of children attending tuition-based schools (including college), assets and liabilities not reflected in household income, and other factors. 

Because each family is unique, families are invited to consult with the Indexed Tuition committee regarding their financial situations. A tuition calculator will also be available in December. 

To ensure that family contributions are equitable and confidential, Thaden School has engaged FAST, one of the nation’s leading tuition management services. Families that wish to apply for indexed tuition must submit several financial documents to FAST, including recent pay stubs, W-2s, filed tax returns, and account statements. Your application for Indexed Tuition will be held in the strictest confidence.

Families with multiple households that apply for Indexed Tuition are required to submit financial documentation for each household with custodial responsibilities for the child. Each household’s Indexed Tuition application will be treated as confidential and completed separately. 

Your applications for Indexed Tuition and admission, while they should be submitted at the same time, will be reviewed separately.

Beginning with the 2022-23 academic year, your family contribution may be locked-in for the entirety of your child’s enrollment within a given division: Middle School (Grades 6-8) or Upper School (Grades 9-12).

You must reapply for Indexed Tuition when your child transitions from Grade 8 to Grade 9. Given the higher costs associated with the Upper School program, you should expect your family contribution to increase by at least 8 percent.

You may also be asked to reapply for Indexed Tuition if you send a second child to Thaden, in which case you should expect your family contribution to increase. Further details will be released in December 2023.

Finally, we expect that families will share material changes in their financial circumstances – for better or worse – that might justify an equitable adjustment to their family contribution.

We aspire to make admissions decisions without regard to a family’s financial resources and review applications for admission separately from applications for Indexed Tuition. However, our operating budget is based on certain assumptions regarding the amount of tuition revenue that we must generate to hire our talented faculty and maintain small student-teacher ratios. For this reason, we may not extend final offers of admission until we have estimated the total tuition revenue that our student body is likely to generate as a whole.

Your family contribution is all-inclusive: it covers not only tuition but also transportation to school, two daily meals (breakfast and lunch), all instructional materials, athletics, afterschool clubs, field trips, and the use of a personal laptop for the academic year. 

You should expect to pay for school apparel and supplies. Families must live outside a 5-mile radius of our school to be eligible for transportation.