Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin | Winter '24

Inspire the Next

The Campaign for Choate Rosemary Hall

You know, this School is people … Nothing else is more important. That is why we entrust the Admission Office to travel the world to find the students who match up best with the program that we’re offering — and who can reach their full potential and can reflect our values.

– Head of School Alex D. Curtis

A Deep Commitment to Financial Aid

by Leslie Virostek P ’15, ’17, ’20

A deep commitment to students that is fundamental to the School’s character. That’s what Katherine “Kitty” Forrest ’82 believes explains her experience as a Choate Rosemary Hall student with great promise but very little means.

A former judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and currently an attorney in private practice, Forrest knew when she enrolled at Choate that the School had made an arrangement with her parents for some tuition assistance, but not a full scholarship.

It was only after she graduated that she learned her family had not kept their end of the bargain. But Choate had fulfilled its commitment to her — and then some. School administrators kept her enrolled and made sure she could purchase what she needed at the School store. Despite her inability to pay, she was able to do what all Choate students have the opportunity to do: immerse herself in academic work and School life, three varsity sports and serving as the editor of what was then the sports newspaper. “They supported me,” she says. “And perhaps one of the most important ways in which they supported me was by never mentioning it.”

Forrest is now a member of the Board of Trustees, and as an adult she repaid her family’s debt to the School. She attributes Choate’s support for her to a core value that predated her experience and continues to this day. And that is a strong, unwavering “commitment to students who will benefit from what the School has to offer and who have something to offer the School.”

In the decades since Forrest graduated, Choate has deepened and formalized its commitment to students of modest means. In 2013, the iPad program leveled the playing field, providing every student with the same technology with which to pursue their academic studies. That same year, the School established the Beyond the Classroom Fund to ensure full access to experiences in School life that would have presented a financial hardship to some students. And in the area of financial aid, Choate has made great strides. The Class of 2027 is the most socioeconomically diverse in School history, with 40 percent of its members receiving tuition assistance.

Financial Aid as a Campaign Priority

The launch of Inspire the Next: The Campaign for Choate Rosemary Hall marks an important chapter in the effort to make Choate accessible to qualified students. Identifying financial aid as a key priority, the campaign seeks to secure new funding that will profoundly impact the School’s ability to welcome promising students from all walks of life. A deep commitment to students that is fundamental to the School’s character: The campaign is a powerful opportunity for the Choate Rosemary Hall community to forcefully reaffirm who we are, who we have always been, and who we want to continue to be.

“You know, this School is people,” says Head of School Alex D. Curtis. “Nothing else is more important. That is why we entrust the Admission Office to travel the world to find the students who match up best with the program that we’re offering — and who can reach their full potential and can reflect our values.”

But, he notes, financial barriers make it impossible to admit many who would contribute to the School and benefit from an education that is often described by alumni as “foundational” and “trajectory-altering.” Or in the words of Kitty Forrest: “life changing and transformative for me in such positive ways.”

Increasing funding for tuition assistance is good unto itself. But Curtis points out that dedicating significantly more money to financial aid also strengthens Choate’s position as a top-tier school. Accurate comparisons with peer schools on the issue of financial aid are difficult to make, Curtis notes, due to such variables as different enrollment numbers, tuition costs, and endowment sizes. In addition, some figures can be artificially manipulated. For example, all it takes to increase the percentage of students receiving aid is to take away one full scholarship and spread it out among additional students.

That’s why Curtis wants Choate to home in on a key metric, called the discount rate. Simply put, the discount rate is a number that represents the percentage of tuition revenue that is not collected because it is offset by financial aid. As such, it provides an “apples to apples” look at how schools are doing in the area of financial aid. “To me, what’s meaningful is it allows us to do actual comparisons with other places,” says Curtis. More broadly, though, the number is indicative of a school’s values: A high discount rate broadcasts to the world that an institution considers accessibility to be a high priority.

Curtis notes that in virtually every category that can be qualitatively evaluated or numerically measured — from academic excellence and program offerings to such things as the number of applications for admission and the yield — Choate excels. “But in terms of the discount rate, we are eight, nine, even 10 percentage points behind,” says Curtis. “We’re not even on the same field.”

For all those reasons, Curtis is intent on setting meaningful and achievable goals for increasing Choate’s discount rate (see below).

Coming Together as a Community to Prioritize Financial Aid

The campaign’s progress over the coming years will build on what a number of committed donors are already doing to support student access via financial aid.

Carl Dong ’14 is one of them. Year after year, he has directed his Annual Fund donations specifically toward financial aid. As a student he valued the vibrancy and diversity of Choate’s community, but that is only one of the reasons for his steady support for financial aid. He says that back then, he had the opportunity to attend a few Board of Trustees Meetings as a student representative. That experience provided some key insights into how the School operates financially — including how the Annual Fund makes up the difference between tuition and what it really costs to educate students. More broadly, though, Dong is motivated to stay engaged in this way because Choate keeps getting better. He applauds a number of developments that came after he graduated, particularly the launch of the Kohler Environmental Center and the strengthening of programmatic offerings in computer science and robotics. He says, “I feel like Choate is forward thinking, and that’s incredibly important.”

Clayton Albertson ’95, P ’26 is another member of the Choate community who cares deeply about the School’s ability to provide financial aid to students. Like Kitty Forrest, he received tuition assistance from the School himself. With his mother an educator and his father in the military, Albertson says paying for Choate was a stretch for the family. He believes his Choate experiences opened up many opportunities for him in life — and to this day, reflecting on the sacrifices his parents made to support his education makes him emotional. His gratitude toward them, and toward the School, has long inspired a desire to pay it forward. “Nobody gets to Choate without the support of someone around them,” he says. “I always hoped that sometime I might find a way to help others get access to these experiences.”

Albertson found a way this year. He and his wife, Jacqueline Arthur P ’26, endowed a scholarship fund. The couple, whose son is currently a Choate fourth former, knows that endowed scholarships help the School cast a broader net for people who have the talent and the desire but not the means. Albertson firmly believes that enrolling the best students will make Choate the best school it can be. “I am proud of my Choate experience,” he says, “and I would like to see the School produce leaders who do great things in their lives.”

Alex Curtis says that Annual Fund donations like Carl Dong’s and endowed scholarships like the one created by the Albertson family both play a critical role. Annual Fund donations are immediately put to use to benefit students, and without them the School could not keep tuition increases as low as possible year after year. “If you’re starting from scratch, you wouldn’t create a model like this. It’s essentially running at a deficit every year and having to fundraise that difference,” he says of the way the Annual Fund supports the School in real time.

On the other hand, with endowed scholarships — which currently make up 45 percent of the financial aid budget — the principal is invested with Choate’s endowment. From then on, the annual draw will support student after student in perpetuity. The minimum gift to create a named endowed scholarship is $250,000.

“This is something that will last for the life of the School,” says Curtis. “There’s a foreverness about it that is so powerful. You’re providing that transformative experience for thousands of children over decades, if not hundreds of years. When you start thinking about it like that, it’s mind-blowing in its impact.”

He also notes that any gift to the endowment strengthens the School’s financial footing. “You can say Choate is a great school, but the only way we can stay at this point and continue to evolve, and grow, and be better is with long-term financial security,” he says. “And that only comes from the endowment. There’s no other place that comes from.”

For Curtis, the campaign is a welcome opportunity to talk about financial aid, a topic he is deeply passionate about. Early in his career, his first administrative job was serving as a financial aid director — and later as an admission director — working directly with families to help them access the education they valued so highly.

“This has been fundamental to how I see schools,” he says. “Admission — and financial aid — is at the heart of everything. It is in every fiber of my understanding of how to make the best possible school. For me it’s not a theoretical thing. It’s personal.

“And until the Admission Office tells me that they were able to admit everybody they wanted to, without thinking about the limits of financial aid, we know we still have work to do.”

What is the Discount Rate?

When the Fed talks about the “discount rate,” it is referring to a particular interest rate charged to commercial banks and on loans. When schools talk about it, they are referring to a key financial aid metric.

• The discount rate represents the percentage of tuition revenue that is not collected because it’s offset by financial aid.

• It’s computed by dividing the total financial aid given by the school by the total gross tuition revenue. For instance, if a school has a gross tuition revenue of $10 million and provides $2.5 million in financial aid, its discount rate is 25%.

• A higher discount rate reflects an institution’s commitment to making education more accessible.

Setting Our Goals for the Next Five Years:

• Reasonable Aspirational Goal: A target rate of 29%, aligning with most peer schools with endowments larger than Choate’s, but less than 2x as large as Choate’s endowment.

• Stretch Goal: Challenging ourselves to reach the upper levels of peer schools with a target rate of 31 to 32%.

There’s a foreverness about it that is so powerful. You’re providing that transformative experience for thousands of children over decades, if not hundreds of years. When you start thinking about it like that, it’s mind-blowing in its impact.

– Alex D. Curtis