Tucked into the heart of Atlanta’s vibrant Buckhead neighborhood, Pace Academy is a place where tradition and innovation meet in pursuit of excellence. Since 1958, the school has nurtured generations of young people who are not only academically prepared, but also globally minded and purpose-driven. Whether on stage, in the classroom, or through the global lens of the Isdell Center for Global Leadership, Pace students are inspired to lead lives of integrity, impact, and meaning.

While there was no ostensibly reason to overhaul their operational processes, it was Pace Academy’s commitment to excellence in every facet of school life that led the team to explore whether a better way was possible.

“With our old system, we used to just deal with it. It's not really until you find something better that you realize how bad you had it and how good it could really be,” explained Mac McCallum, Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Pace Academy.

‍

Built For Busy Teams to Make Better Decisions 

“Chasing families down to submit documents used to cause massive frustration for us,” McCallum shared. “It was a huge task to reach out to families individually to get them to hunt through all the numbers on their tax returns. It was clunky, outdated, and inefficient,” he added. 

“At every school I've been a part of, and at the schools that I know, the financial aid person, if there is even one in-house, is tasked with a lot of other responsibilities and priorities,” explained McCallum. 

“We don't have a lot of spare time to do these menial tasks that ensure applications are complete and documents are submitted correctly.”

“Clarity adds tremendous value by making the whole process more efficient for our team and for our families,” explained McCallum.

“So much of the manual labor that I used to have to do just to get families to completion is now automated by Clarity. That's a huge win.” 

Beyond streamlining the application process, Pace was also able to enhance the efficiency of their decision-making, making it easier for their time-strapped team to collaborate and award aid with confidence.

“I would say that at most schools it's not one individual making award decisions in isolation, and sometimes the stakeholders involved need more information than what I'm verbally telling them,” McCallum explained. “Clarity’s Suggested Tuition Summary Report makes it easy to download all the information that needs to be part of our analysis.”  

“It ensures we’re making sound but also efficient final award decisions.”

“Everything about Clarity feels to me like it's built with efficiency in mind, and built for people that are light on time.”

Awarding With Transparency and Confidence

“Clarity helps us get to that fair, objective dollar amount for each family. It allows me to be highly analytical in the way I need it to be analytical for my school,” shared McCallum.

“I have all the submitted information right in front of me in a digestible format. It’s been verified by the tax returns and I trust that we’ve captured everything we need to,” he continued. “I can then deliver that to our financial aid committee, and then inevitably to the families when they have questions for me. I use every ounce of what’s in front of me in those conversations.”

‍

More Time For What Matters Most

By eliminating time-consuming administrative tasks, Clarity has allowed the team at Pace to redirect their energy toward the work that truly reflects their mission and values.

“Clarity saves me days, if not weeks of time,” shared McCallum.

“The primary function of my job on the admissions side is to meet with as many families as I can and to articulate the mission of our school to a wide group of people,” he added. “By nature of that, I am a better admissions professional the less time I spend at my desk.”

“I don't want to underscore the importance of financial aid, because it is critical. But there were things that I needed to be doing to fulfill the mission of my job and the mission of our school that used to be occupied by the more menial tasks associated with financial aid.”

“Clarity has largely freed me up to do my job better.”

“I also now get to be the history teacher I want to be. I get a chance to teach more and be with the kids, which is the primary reason I’m at Pace.”

‍

The Additional Team Member You Didn’t Know You Needed

“With our prior system, there was a million reasons why something could have slipped through the cracks – from user error, to system limitations, to simply me missing it and there being no mitigating force,” explained McCallum. 

“Clarity makes us feel like we're not missing anything.”

“We feel assured that we have captured and verified all the information that we would need to make a strong decision,” he continued. “That shift has been huge for us.”

“An example of this would be when a family answers a question about owning a business, Clarity automatically flags them for additional tax documents.”

“I'm not an accountant, I'm a history teacher. Some schools may have an accountant that can spend their time diving into those pieces of the financial aid puzzle, but we don’t at Pace."

"We’ve benefited a lot from the thoroughness that the Clarity process provides.”

‍

A Culture of Continuous Improvement

“I've been doing financial aid for a really long time, and the previous system we used hadn't been updated the entire time. I would say there was an overall frustration with the lack of development," shared McCallum.

“That's why what is super impressive to me is the constant updates to the Clarity platform. The idea that you are constantly in the product improvement phase is really reassuring. That habitual belief in continuous improvement makes it hard for me to understand why any school wouldn’t choose Clarity.”

‍