Mounds Park Academy offers financial aid to enable students of diverse economic backgrounds to attend MPA. These grants are available to students entering Kindergarten through grade 12 and do not need to be repaid. Aid awards are based on a family’s assessed financial “need,” the amount of aid available, and the number of applicants. MPA believes that the family should be the first resource for funding an independent education; however the school community is committed to increasing the financial aid budget in order to reach more students who would not otherwise have the resources to attend MPA.

MPA assesses a family’s financial need with the help of an outside agency used by schools nationwide— the School and Student Service for Financial Aid (SSS). Each family applying for aid completes an SSS Parents’ Financial Statement (PFS) form. (In cases of divorce, both custodial and non-custodial parents must complete the form.) SSS processes these forms and sends MPA a calculation of a family’s financial need. MPA’s financial aid committee uses this and other information to determine a family’s financial aid award amount.

Because several factors contribute to determining financial need, it is impossible to specify if a family at a certain income level would be eligible to receive aid without going through the financial aid application process. Income, assets, taxes, family size, unusual expenses or debts, and number of family members at tuition-based schools are all figured into the financial aid equation to determine need. The amount of aid available to a student is based on two major factors: 1) The amount of money the school is able to reserve for financial aid; and 2) The number of families applying for aid. For the 2007-08 academic year, approximately 12% of MPA students received aid awards ranging from $1,000 to $16,000.