F E AT U R E S
Dollars and Sense: UHS, Money, and Beyond — Jenny Schneider, Director of College Counseling
I
magine it’s the second week of March. The UHS admissions team has just dropped welcome packages in the mail for accepted students. The team members spent the previous day in the Jackson Street Lounge, around its hallmark round table, stuffing acceptance materials into big red envelopes that consist of a warm welcome from our head of school; a congratulations from our admissions team; resources to begin getting oriented to what being a UHS
UHS Financial Aid
student means; and, for 25% of the enrolling class this year, a financial aid award. The team drives the packages to the Geary post office, drops off the envelopes, and returns with empty bins and hopeful hearts for the next enrolling class at UHS. Thus commences the next stage of the admissions process: courting accepted candidates and hoping the talented young people who have been admitted will accept a spot at the school. For many families, money will be a key driver in a final decision about where to send their Goals rising ninth grader.
To endow our Educational Promise scholarships that provide full financial aid to one or two Breakthrough Summerbridge students who are admitted to and enroll at UHS each year To endow financial aid dollars to ensure that we can continue dedicating the same amount of funds to supporting our students and their families To expand immediate-use financial aid dollars at the disposal of our admissions team while each endowment grows
6
U H S J o u r n a l | FALL 2021
For the Class of 2025, the UHS admissions team had more than a million dollars to allocate from the financial aid budget. While the school is fortunate to have these dollars to spend, determining how to allocate them in the most effective way poses a challenge. UHS, like most independent educational institutions, relies on tuition dollars, and Director of Admissions Nate Lundy and his team must annually navigate the tension between fulfilling the part of the school’s mission “to build and sustain a community of diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and talents” and remaining responsible with a generous, but still limited,
budget. Lundy says, “For us, it’s about trying to figure out how we craft a class that we want, and that we believe is aligned with our mission, vision, and values, with the budget we have. If that means we’re giving a family a full ride because that’s what they qualify for, then that’s what we are going to do.” ON CAMPUS It was a warm spring day in March 2018 when Luqmaan Shaikh ’21 received good news from UHS. He came home from his middle school to find his welcome package and, with it, enough financial aid to make a UHS education affordable. Luqmaan knew the UHS campus well from his experience as a Breakthrough Summerbridge student. For his family, the decision to commit to UHS was easy. His mother, Shehnaaz, says, “He was already comfortable at UHS, and the financial aid was such that it wasn’t a very difficult decision to make. From what I’d seen of UHS, compared to the schools that my older children had attended, it was a no-brainer. If we could make it work, we had to do it for him.” The word that came up the most in our conversation with Shehnaaz about UHS is “support.” The Shaikh family not only saw an opportunity for Luqmaan to thrive in an environment with small class sizes, they also saw UHS as a potential safe haven from some of his experiences in middle school. Shehnaaz remembers, “I wanted a more supportive and understanding community, and we found that at UHS. Once he was accepted, it was like, ‘Yay. He’s going.’ We’re so lucky and grateful for this amazing opportunity.”
For most of his ninth-grade year, Luqmaan’s family lived in the manager’s apartment at a residential hotel that his dad manages, and he remembers feeling like he couldn’t invite people over because the space was so small. “People invited me over to their houses, and I couldn’t reciprocate the favor,” he says. “Sometimes I felt like a leech. It helped a lot that I have friends from UHS who also attended public middle schools and came from different worlds.” While Luqmaan felt some discomfort about his socioeconomic status at UHS, he was determined to take advantage of as many opportunities as he could. By his senior year, Luqmaan had been elected by his peers to serve as a Vice President of Diversity and Equity; a leader of the South Asian Club; and a leader of Men’s Club, a studentrun organization devoted to talking about issues related to masculinity in the UHS community and broader cultural contexts. This fall, Luqmaan is attending Lehigh University, with the additional honor of being a Posse Scholar. Luqmaan reflects, “I don’t think I would have had the leadership opportunities I had at UHS at another high school. UHS and Summerbridge, and now Posse, have set me up with a series of opportunities to move up in life.” Just a few years ago, during Luqmaan’s freshman year, Shruti Jain ’20 and Jasmine Gonzalez ’21 spearheaded the founding of Financial Aid and Socioeconomic Status (FASES), a new affinity space on campus, designed to cultivate discussions that are more open about money and create a greater sense of belonging for students receiving
