A beacon of holistic education where academic rigor meets spiritual growth, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School is dedicated to nurturing students with a focus around four main pillars: Scholar, Artist, Athlete, and Servant. Since 1952, St. Andrew’s has fostered an inclusive environment that emphasizes curiosity, courage, and compassion within a loving Episcopal community.​​

With the same commitment to care and excellence extending to interactions with families, the admissions team took it seriously when they heard feedback about the burden of the financial aid application. 

“We were hearing from our parents that it took a long time to complete the application,” shared Priscilla Lund, Director of Enrollment Management & Financial Aid K-12 at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. “We always look to create a positive experience for our prospective families, and we could see how burdensome it was for them.”

On the other side of the application, not having an easy and efficient way to read financial aid applications had become an ongoing frustration for the St. Andrew’s team.

“The system we were using was really cumbersome. You had to sift through lots of different areas to get what you were looking for,” Lund explained. “Once we saw that Clarity could solve all these sources of friction and then some, we decided to give it a try.”

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Elevating Efficiency

“Right away in the first year, we had lots of positive compliments from our families,” shared Lund. “It now takes them 20 to 30 minutes versus an hour to an hour and a half. Every family can use that time back in their days for something else.”

“The reapplication process is much simpler for families as well,” Lund continued. “We used to have parents creating a new account each year and then we weren’t able to see all the historical data. Clarity makes it really easy for them to pick up where they left off the previous year.” 

And while families were experiencing a smoother, faster process on their end, the experience extended to the St. Andrew’s team as well.

“Reading files is now so much easier for our financial aid committee."

The categorization in Clarity, like assets, expenses, liabilities, income, background information, makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for,” Lund shared.

“Clarity’s Suggested Tuition Summary Report is all you need to view a clear breakdown of the important items and to be able to read the file really easily,” she added.

“You can tell that the Clarity platform was built by people who understand how financial aid works and know what features actually make our day-to-day easier.”  

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Right-Sizing Awards and Staying Under Budget

“Clarity has really helped us be able to offer awards with more precision.”

“We’ve also been able to wean some of our families off of financial aid,” shared Karen Cowan, Chief Financial Officer at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. 

“Those conversations we had to have were much easier to have with all the data that we get in Clarity,” she continued. 

“For example, I had a family that input double the allowances that we allow,” shared Lund. “And I was able to go back to them and explain how we set the allowance and show them why that meant they didn’t qualify. Seeing all the data clearly laid out, they understood completely.” 

“All the information we get in Clarity makes it possible to have high quality appeal and DNQ conversations that help build trust instead of break it,” she added. 

The same level of strategic insight also extends to the school’s financial aid budget, creating room to support mission-aligned decisions later in the enrollment cycle.

“We’ve come in below budget for financial aid all three years that we’ve used Clarity,” shared Cowan. 

“And when we're under budget, especially early on in the round, that means I have funds for any excellent applicants that come in May and June, which we didn't have in the past,” added Lund.

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Best Practices That Build Trust

“Clarity has also helped us align our admissions process with industry best practices,” shared Lund. 

“We offer a financial aid webinar and a financial aid consultation call for families where we assess for them whether it’s worth their time applying for financial aid or not,” she explained.

“Clarity makes it really easy for us to make that assessment, so it doesn’t take us a lot of time to include the consultation in our process,” she added. “On the flip side, though, it has allowed us to build stronger relationships with families by having the conversations earlier.” 

“Clarity also allows us to make admissions decisions and financial aid decisions on the same day, and so much goodwill is garnered with our families by doing this.”

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A Trusted Partner Beyond the Platform

“One thing I didn't necessarily expect was the impact our Clarity Client Success Manager would have for us,” shared Lund. 

“When we have some of those messy middle files that we need an extra viewpoint on, we can call her and she’ll give us her assessment based on her decades of experience with financial aid work,” she continued. 

“She also helps us do a review of our previous year and talks through with us any adjustments we need to make for the next year. That’s a service that’s incredibly helpful to our team, and it’s all just included in the offering. The amount of value we’ve gotten from Clarity has been tremendous.”