Tuition & Aid
Fayerweather reaches across incomes, by design. We want the families who make up the school to reflect the real range of the city around us, and financial aid is how we make that happen.
36% of Fayerweather students receive need-based tuition assistance. In 2024–25, we allocated more than $1,350,000 toward it, with an average award of about $22,000.
Awards are based on demonstrated need. We work closely with every family who applies, and we pro-rate extracurricular programs at roughly the same rate as tuition so access extends past the school day.
Fayerweather for you.
Questions about Tuition Assistance
How are aid amounts determined?
To figure out what a family can reasonably contribute to tuition, we use Clarity, a third-party financial aid system that looks at both income and assets to produce a top-line estimate. That gives us a fair, consistent starting point — the same math applied to every family who applies. But it's a starting point, not the whole picture. From there, we weigh our annual tuition assistance budget, how many families across the school and within each grade are requesting aid, what awards looked like the year before, and other financial details specific to your situation. So the number we land on may come in higher or lower than Clarity's initial estimate, and that's by design.
How does a family apply for tuition assistance?
Our tuition assistance program exists for one reason: to make a Fayerweather education possible for any family with demonstrated need, within what we have available to give. We use the Clarity Application to understand that need, based on the income, assets, expenses, and debts a family shares with us.
Start by creating an account through the Clarity Application. Most families finish in under 30 minutes, and you can do it from your phone, save your progress, and pick up right where you left off. Submitting costs $60 — after that, you can share the same application with any other school that uses Clarity at no extra charge, just by selecting them from a dropdown.
Once you've submitted, don't close the tab yet. Head back to your dashboard, where we'll ask you to upload a few more documents, including tax returns and W-2s.
Completed applications, documents and all, are due February 1.
Clarity offers support in English and Spanish — through the Help button in the app, by email at support@clarityapp.com, or by phone at 206-210-3752. The application itself is fully translated into Spanish as well.
What about returning families and siblings?
Once your child is enrolled and receiving aid, we stay with you. Circumstances change, and awards can shift up or down to match — but our commitment to meeting your family's need doesn't. That commitment carries over to siblings, too: when a second child joins us, they start out with the same consideration, not a clean slate.
More questions?
Jenni Stange, our Director of Finance and Operations, is the person to reach out to. Whatever you share with us about your finances stays strictly confidential.
Founded in 1967, Fayerweather is an all-gender independent private school enrolling students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and located in Cambridge, MA. Children here are taken seriously — as thinkers, as individuals, as people whose presence in the world already matters. They learn by doing real things, in real places, for real audiences. They become themselves, in community, over time.
