Each year, St. Mary's provides scholarship funds for families who are in need of assistance and would not otherwise be able to send their children to our school. St. Mary's School employs Private School Aid Service (PSAS) to help assist in the management of our financial aid program.

Private School Aid Service, or PSAS, was founded in 1975 as a company specializing in need analysis for private grade schools and high schools. Approximately 85% of their clients are Catholic Schools. The PSAS management team, with over 80 years of combined financial aid experience, strives to use its expertise to provide an objective and uniform need evaluation. The tool used to calculate affordability is the PSAS Need Analysis System, a process that has evolved over more than twenty-five years.

Some of the benefits of using PSAS are the following:

• We receive accurate, objective, and complete data due to the verification process and uniform ranking criteria.
• We are assured of anonymity and confidentiality through the use of an outside service. Families' anxiety about sharing confidential information is eased.
• The evaluation process compares all families to a specific standard.
• The application includes a section for families to explain unusual circumstances (i.e., loss of job, recent divorce, change in work status, death in the family).
• This is a cooperative effort between school and PSAS.

PSAS will provide our school with the results of their calculations and their recommended scholarship amounts. We will review them and send them out to parents. Each applicant can be assured that the decision made on their financial aid application was based on fair and objective evaluation, combined with the personal attention they have come to appreciate in our school.

Each family applying for assistance must complete a PSAS Student Aid Form and mail it directly to the PSAS. There is a nominal fee charged by PSAS for processing your application. Please check with someone in the School Office for current processing fee information. Student Aid Forms are available in the School Office and must be completed, mailed, and received by PSAS by May of each year. Feel free to stop by the school to pick up an application, or call and we will send one in a confidential envelope with your child.