It’s never been more expensive to attend one of America’s most elite private schools, where tuition averages almost $50,000 a year and can approach $80,000 for boarding — and that’s before class trips, the pressure to donate and other extras. Little surprise, then, that schools increasingly draw from two ends of the income spectrum: the ultrawealthy, who can pay full freight, and lower-income students receiving substantial aid.
Now that model is starting to crack. A declining population of school-age children is intensifying competition for students, while soaring tuition has made even affluent families balk at the price. So schools are starting to advertise what was once handled more quietly: discounts, cost-of-living adjustments, awards and flexible tuition.
Private schools around the country accustomed to courting families rich enough to pay in full are increasingly making a pitch to those rich enough to pay something. And they’re also open to giving full rides for a wider range of families.
Brearley, an all-girls day school in New York, in 2025 started offering free tuition for families earning $100,000 or less and a sliding scale extending to more than $200,000. At St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, 22% of last year’s financial assistance went to families earning more than $200,000.
And in 2024, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts announced that families earning under $150,000 would pay no tuition, while others would pay no more than 10% of their income.
That fall, Caddie and Patrick, two Western Massachusetts teachers who earn less than $150,000 combined, joined their 14-year-old son on a tour through Deerfield’s leafy campus. It offers amenities that would make most parents and kids swoon, including a hockey rink, 15 squash courts, robotics facilities and a planetarium.
“Once you go to a place that’s as special as Deerfield and you see it, it’s almost like, if there’s no chance of going, you don’t even want to go,” says Caddie. (The family asked to be identified by their first names to protect their privacy.)
As they walked through state-of-the-art facilities, their student guide narrated what he liked and didn’t like about the school. They met with coaches, teachers and other students. By the end, “we knew that our son saw himself there and was really excited,” Patrick says.
Defining middle class
The schools call the parents they’re targeting middle class, though many earn far more than the roughly $84,000 median income for a US family. Depending on the school, families earning anywhere from around $150,000 to more than $500,000 can qualify for help.
“They want a stratification of all different kinds of socioeconomic levels, so that combined-income $500,000 family is actually really interesting,” educational consultant Holly Treat says. “They can capture enough net tuition revenue from that family and then offer them a discount and enroll an amazing kid.”
Groton, a Massachusetts boarding school, calls this group “the talented missing middle.” In 2025 it began offering free tuition to families earning $150,000 or less. The school had previously offered free tuition to families earning $80,000 or less.
The shift also reflects how soaring tuition has made private school increasingly unpalatable even for families who can technically afford it. “Tuitions have outpaced family income,” says John P.N. Austin, head of Deerfield Academy, which expanded its financial-aid program following similar moves by top colleges. “Even if you’re making $200,000, that’s a steep, steep price.”
Investment adviser SmartAsset estimates that a family of four needs roughly $200,000 a year to live comfortably even in San Antonio or New Orleans. In New York, that figure rises to almost $340,000.
Deals, deals, deals
Schools have quietly offered discounts and cost-of-living adjustments for years. What’s changing is how openly they tout them and, in some cases, the formality of their structure. About a third of US private schools using a flexible model where tuition was set through a sliding or income-based scale had adopted it within the previous year, according to a survey conducted in late 2023 by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). Another 20% had been using this model for the previous one to three years. Most cited the goal of increasing enrollment as a reason for the change.
Some advertise awards ranging from $1,000 to more than $60,000, depending on family income. Others provide online calculators where parents can enter their earnings and estimate what they might actually pay.
Deerfield’s new policy means a family earning $400,000 a year would pay $40,000 for a boarding student this year, half the $80,000 full tuition. Applications for aid have risen 30% since the school introduced the model in 2024, Austin says.
For Caddie and Patrick, the policy changed the equation entirely. “It wasn’t until we read it in writing that we really thought and asked our son, ‘Would you like to apply? Because if you get in, you can go,’” Caddie says. He got in — the school accepts roughly 15% of applicants — and now attends the school on a full ride.
Parents have noted an increased level of generosity. Megan Amundson, a parent in New Hampshire, was looking for private schools for her three sons before Deerfield implemented its policy. Her family’s household income is about $147,000.
Her sons all ended up attending Deerfield starting in 2018. The family paid roughly $5,000 in tuition for one child, and as much as $8,000 for the years when two boys were enrolled. For their youngest son’s final year, the family benefited from the school’s new policy and paid no tuition.
“It has given my kids the opportunity of a lifetime — the friends that they’ve made, the connections they had with teachers,” she says. All three were captains on the swim team. They went on to Bates College and the University of Pennsylvania.
Schools across the country are making similar offers. In Virginia, Woodberry Forest School features a video on its website in which assistant headmaster Karla Vargas-Kennedy encourages all families to apply for tuition assistance. “Almost half of our boys receive assistance,” she says. The all-boys boarding school charged just under $70,000 last year.
And Crystal Springs Uplands School, a co-ed Bay Area day school where tuition costs almost $69,000, rebranded financial aid to its tuition-assistance program two years ago.
“The program at its core has not changed. It’s how we talk about it, that’s what has changed,” says Oriana Layne, its director of marketing, media and affordability.
On the school’s website, case studies show a mix of families and how much they pay in tuition. A two-parent family with an income of $490,000 pays roughly $40,000 for each child, for instance. The school pays 24% of tuition and the costs for extras such as trips.
“You could glance at someone’s taxes and their W2 and make an assumption,” Layne says, but “there could be so much more to that person’s story, especially in the Bay Area.”
A delicate balance
The number of families paying full tuition remains larger than the number of those receiving financial aid at most schools. But the old rule of thumb of schools aiming for a discount rate of 20% — the amount of aid versus tuition collected — is maintained now by only a minority of schools as they expand aid to fill seats, says Chad Tew, a consultant in the Los Angeles area who advises schools on financial matters. Schools are more worried about underenrollment than overextending financial aid, says Mark Mitchell, vice president for access and affordability at NAIS.
Institutions fund these financial awards through tuition revenue or savings. Groton has raised more than $100 million to fund its financial-aid programs since 2014, and Deerfield’s endowment was valued at more than $1 billion in June 2025. Not all schools are so flush. The median endowment among NAIS schools is about $9 million, the organization says.
Consultants who help schools manage their finances warn that financial risk can increase as schools extend more help to students. Last year, Manhattan Country School, a New York institution known for offering a sliding scale of tuition to families across various income levels, shuttered after losing too many full-pay families.
The Hill School is a co-ed boarding and day school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. It’s in the initial phase of a fundraising campaign that aims in part to expand need-based financial aid. This includes that upper-middle-income bracket of around $300,000, where “demonstrated need has bubbled up in the last few years,” says Tom Eccleston, assistant head of school for enrollment management.
“You can define middle class in a lot of different ways, but it’s definitely that middle-income family that will be worried about whether or not they can afford a private tuition,” he says.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.