Private School Tuition Discount Calculator — discount rate and net tuition revenue

What does your sticker price really collect? Discount rate and net tuition

Enter your sticker tuition and the students in each financial-aid group. The tool shows your discount rate, net tuition per student and break-even enrollment, whether a student with a given award still adds money, and what a tuition increase really brings in when aid is held flat or grows with the price.

1. The school

Sticker tuition per student ($ a year)

Seats the school can hold

Fixed costs ($ a year): salaries, facility, admin

Extra cost of each additional student ($ a year)

Surplus you need after all costs ($)

Students lost per 1% sticker increase (%)

2. Students by financial-aid group

One row per group of similar awards. Full-pay families are a group with an award of zero. Up to eight.

Group	Students	Average award ($)

Fill in the numbers, then click Calculate.

Result

By group

Group	Students	Award	Award % of sticker	Net per student	Adds per student	Share of aid

If you raise the sticker price

Increase	Aid	Students	Net tuition	Discount rate	Surplus	vs today

How it is built

Net tuition: students times sticker price, less the average award of each group times its students. The discount rate is total aid divided by gross tuition.

Break-even enrollment: fixed costs divided by what each student adds after their extra cost, at your current aid mix. Highest useful award: sticker price minus the extra cost of a student; below it, one more student adds money.

Increases: each scenario raises the sticker price and either holds every award at today's dollars or scales awards with the price, then removes the share of families you expect to lose. The test suite checks that these figures tie to the plain arithmetic.

Common questions

What is a tuition discount rate?

It is financial aid given as a share of gross tuition: total aid divided by sticker tuition times the number of students. A school with a $24,000 sticker price and $2,120,000 of aid across 300 students has a discount rate of 29.4%. It is a measure of how much of the sticker price the school actually collects.

How do I calculate net tuition revenue?

Multiply sticker tuition by the number of students to get gross tuition, then subtract the aid awarded to every student. What remains is net tuition revenue. Divide by the number of students for net tuition per student.

Should a school raise tuition or hold aid flat?

If aid stays the same in dollars, every dollar of a sticker increase on a paying family is kept and the discount rate falls. If aid grows with the sticker price, the discount rate stays the same and less of the increase is kept. The tool shows both side by side, with the number of families you expect to lose to the higher price.

Does an extra student with financial aid still help the budget?

Yes, while the award is smaller than the sticker price minus the extra cost of that student, because fixed costs are paid either way. A seat that stays empty brings in nothing. The tool shows the highest award that still adds money.

Is my school's data uploaded?

No. Everything is calculated in your browser, there are no accounts, and nothing is sent to a server. Use Save to download a scenario file.

Is this financial or enrollment advice?

No. It is arithmetic on the numbers you type. Families react to price in ways a single number cannot predict, and aid decisions carry fairness and mission questions. Talk to your head of school, board finance committee or auditor.