Nestled on a 44-acre estate along the Delaware River in New Jersey, Villa Victoria Academy has been a beacon of academic excellence and spiritual growth for over 90 years. With a mission rooted in Catholic values, the school provides an education that emphasizes the development of the whole self, while fostering the bonds of sisterhood that unite their community.

With a commitment to making a Villa Victoria education accessible to as many students as possible, they needed to ensure their aid was reaching as far as possible. 

“We fundraise in order to provide financial aid, like a lot of other schools, but we're doing it with a very small population,” shared Colleen White, Director of Admissions and Development at Villa Victoria Academy. “We switched to Clarity, and now we’re able to do so much more with what we have.”

Finding a Way to Serve More Families

“We had a sense that the numbers we were getting from our previous financial aid system weren’t accurate,” White explained. “We needed to understand the nuances of our families’ financial situations because about 80% of our families apply for financial aid, and we want to do the best job we can to reach as many families as possible with the funds we have," she continued.

“Clarity gives us a clearer picture of a family's financial situation, and because of that we were able to right-size our awards, providing a more appropriate amount of aid to each family."

Villa Victoria made small adjustments to the amount of aid their families received, and ended up re-enrolling each one of those students. 

“I believe it’s a testament to the confidence our families have in the quality of a Villa education,” shared White.

“All those small amounts do add up, though, and at the end of the day, we are able to serve more families.”

“The bottom line is that our aid goes further with Clarity than it did under the old system we used.”

Growing and Sustaining Revenue Through Precise Awards

“Clarity gave us a way to calculate more appropriate aid amounts for each of our families, and as a result, we were able to increase our net revenue,” explained White.

“In our first year with Clarity, we saw a 12% increase in our net revenue. The majority of that increase is simply from giving more precise aid amounts to every family."

“A little bit of it can be attributed to a small cost-of-living increase we passed on to each family, but it’s not that we added anymore students to our school, or anything like that," she continued.

That precision has only become more valuable over time. Even as enrollment has dropped 9%, tuition revenue has held steady.

"Every year when we get a new family, we're able to pinpoint what they can pay way better than we used to," White explained. "That precision has allowed us to stay at basically the same tuition revenue even though we have eight fewer students, which for us is an eleventh of our school. That's a big deal."

Time Savings For a Small Team

A small team managing outdated processes as best as they could, Villa Victoria quickly realized the advantages of automation, especially when it came to their communication with families.

“We used to have to generate our own aid letters and emails,” shared White. “Now with our email templates in Clarity, we’re able to communicate so much more efficiently with our families. The correct financial aid data automatically appears in the letters and we click ‘send’.  It has saved us so much time, and has eliminated so much of the human error,” she continued.

“We also don’t have to chase people down like we used to,” White added. “Clarity automatically sends out the reminders for us, letting our families know what steps they still need to complete and how to complete them.”

“All in all, Clarity probably saved us 15 to 20 hours of work during our enrollment period.”

“If any of this was possible in our old system which we used for about 10 years, it wasn’t obvious and there was no one to explain it to us. It certainly wasn't straightforward like it is in Clarity.”

Offering Families a Stress-Free Financial Aid Experience

On the other side of the application, Villa Victoria is now able to provide their families with a simple and elegant application experience. 

“We’ve heard time and time again from our families that Clarity is so much easier to use. What that means for us is that they're able to complete their application correctly without us needing to step in and help. Everything about Clarity – from the platform to the customer service – is professional, and our families can feel that,” White shared. 

“We also love the fact that for families who really need it, Clarity automatically waives the application fee,” she added.

As part of Clarity's commitment to helping families access the best educational opportunities for their children, application fees are automatically waived for families whose income falls below a certain threshold.

“We were also given fee waivers to distribute to families who requested them. That was not something available with our old provider, but is something that is appreciated by all of us.”

Making Aid Accessible Por Todas Las Familias

With their school community including a sizeable Spanish-speaking population, Villa Victoria was able to turn what was once a frustrating situation into a delightful experience.

“We have quite a few families whose primary language is Spanish, and we used to need someone on staff to sit and help them complete their applications. They needed help, and we wanted to help them,” explained White. “But it required at least an extra 10 hours of someone’s time, and more importantly there were privacy concerns with us being privy to someone else's finances.” 

“So many conversations at our school are about removing barriers. The fact that our families can now complete the whole process in Clarity’s Spanish application is so empowering for them, not to mention time-saving for us."

“Oh, and Clarity offering full support in Spanish – honestly, all of it is such a blessing.”

With enrollment increasingly competitive, the Spanish-language support has become even more strategically important.

"It is harder to find kids," White shared. "We're trying new approaches, going deeper than we did before. Maybe these families think they can't afford Villa. Maybe they think their daughter won't get in. We need to let them know we're standing ready to help."

"With Clarity, a family can easily apply on their own without anybody seeing their business. We're putting the power in the hands of the family."

Standing Out in a Competitive Landscape

As Villa Victoria works to grow enrollment, Clarity has helped them compete alongside independent prep schools in their area.

"I'm always trying to elevate us," White explained. "There's a group of independent prep schools and we're not quite there, but we are competing against them for the same families. With those schools using Clarity, I can just tell a family to add our school in for consideration. That's a huge advantage."

"It puts us in the same conversation as those schools rather than with everybody else," she added.

"Clarity is a better product, and it's going to help your school look better."

Setting a New Standard for Support

“We understand so much more about financial aid strategy because of our Client Success Manager," shared White. "It feels like having an additional member on our team."

Clarity offers each of its partner schools a dedicated Client Success Manager (CSM) who is a consultant, advocate, and resource throughout their entire partnership with Clarity. For Clarity Financial Aid, all CSMs have at least 10 years of experience working in admission and financial aid at private K-12 schools.

“In our first year with Clarity, we just needed something simple. Our CSM so easily understood our needs and provided suggestions to build a formula that made sense for us without being overwhelming."

“One of the most impressive parts about the support at Clarity is that our CSM reaches out to us with really good recommendations on how we could refine our formula and our settings to better match our population,” White explained. It’s so reassuring to have someone in your corner who cares. It feels like a real partnership,” she added. 

“Our Board of Directors are pleased with the results, our Financial Aid Committee thought things were more organized than ever before, and we're just so pleased overall,” White shared.

“The product we used before was free, so switching to Clarity, for us, was an investment. I can say now, without question, that that was money well spent because it has more than paid for itself.”