DOLLARS AND SENSE: UHS, MONEY, AND BEYOND

Dollars and Sense:

UHS, Money, and Beyond

— Jenny Schneider, Director of College Counseling

Imagine 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 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 rising ninth grader.

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.”

UHS Financial Aid Goals

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

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

financial aid at UHS. Chloe Richmond ’21 remembers the first meetings as full of positive energy and excitement: “It was awesome seeing how many people were also on financial aid and seeing peers from so many different backgrounds. Having a space where we could come together and talk about financial aid was really beautiful.” Even during remote learning this past year, FASES hosted regular meetings, which ranged from discussions about the impact of COVID-19 on community members’ lives to collaborations with other campus organizations, such as the Mental Health Coalition and the college counseling office. The affinity space’s success shows that it is supporting students as they navigate the complexities of attending an independent school where, no matter how generous the financial aid budget is, there will always be a larger population of students whose families can afford to pay full tuition for them to attend the school. The reality is that this is not unique to UHS, but is endemic to the business models of independent schools and colleges around the country.

Gaby Garcia ’22, a co-leader of FASES for the upcoming school year, says that when she first arrived at UHS, she felt overwhelmed, and sometimes awkward, about her status as a student receiving financial aid: “Sometimes my peers would talk about going on lavish trips or attending super expensive summer programs. These things sound so cool, and I would have loved to do them if I were from a different socioeconomic class.” Now, as a senior, Gaby speaks from a place of strength. She says, “Realizing the experience of class difference is a reality, but I never feel ashamed of my background. You might have something I don’t have, and I might have something you don’t have. I just want to try and learn from my peers, understand their experiences, and build connection, tear down the wall that prevents us from talking openly.” During the 2021–22 school year, Gaby hopes to continue building a strong community, and is brainstorming ideas such as a buddy system that pairs incoming freshmen with upperclassman FASES members, and writing zines on financial literacy. When asked what she most wants the UHS community to know, Gaby says, “FASES has made my experience at UHS much better. Especially speaking as a Latinx, first-generation, cisgender woman, I am seeing how open and understanding our community is. I want alums to know how positive the impact of this club has been on my experience.”

LOOKING AHEAD

After three years of investment in a UHS education, students and families face discussions about the next stage of the educational journey. To whatever degree money had been part of the conversation when choosing a high school, it inevitably becomes a more complex topic when it involves the cost of a college education.

The college process brings with it anxieties that cut across the socioeconomic spectrum. It is a rite of passage to adulthood. For the majority of UHS students, it means moving away from home. It often means students feeling vulnerable about how they will be evaluated by admission offices. And, for students whose families cannot afford the sticker prices of the colleges they are considering, it also means facing the cost of school up front—which, for most of the wider population of college applicants, influences where they are ultimately able to enroll. For many families, the sticker prices of schools influence where students apply, and unfortunately, many do not end up submitting applications because of sticker shock. Given this reality, the UHS college counseling office continues to work on meeting families where they are, and talking openly and honestly, to provide the best possible guidance for every individual. This fall, we hosted Ron Lieber, New York Times columnist and author of The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Roadmap for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make, for a webinar with other Bay Area schools and organizations, addressing the multiple issues that come up for families around the cost of college. In recent years, we have moved towards a collaborative model and teamed up with other independent schools in the area to host financial aid leaders in higher education, as they share the most current key insights into the financial aid process directly with families.

In addition to providing education for families around the costs associated with applying to college, UHS is working to help students develop better financial literacy. In 2020–21, Megan Storti, chair of the math department, offered a class to students on financial literacy, to help improve their understanding of their finances more broadly. The course featured guest speakers from the Federal Reserve (Eric Fischer ’99) and Merrill Lynch. Students also completed projects on rent control, student loans, and microlending, to get a better sense of opportunities and constraints that individuals living in the Bay Area and beyond face. Feedback from students in the course was overwhelmingly positive. Socioeconomic status is at the intersection of so many parts of our identities, which is one reason it’s so complicated to discuss. But UHS is committed to engaging in conversations that are not always easy. If we do not engage, we cannot grow. We cannot let fear of making mistakes or fumbling prevent us from trying to do what is right. So we continue to evolve, inspired by students like Luqmaan and Gaby and so many others, knowing that there is always more work to do, and knowing that this is part of what it means to live a life of integrity, inquiry, and purpose larger than the self. n