Executive summary
Wexford’s outcomes remain among the strongest in the region — near-universal degree completion and a deep most-selective college list. At this altitude the board’s task is not to fix outcomes but to protect an edge that is quietly under pressure: yield has softened three points as competition and affordability intensify, and the school’s socioeconomic access trails its own stated mission. The academics are not the risk — the enrollment economics are.
The sections that follow cannot be produced from any public dataset or off-the-shelf tool. Each is built by connecting Wexford’s own admissions, enrollment, advising, giving, and outcome data — and each is tagged with the source that unlocks it. This is insight that exists only because it is built from your school.
The single most powerful answer to “is the tuition worth it?” — and the asset almost no school can document. Assembled from Clearinghouse records, alumni surveys, and career data.
Career sector of alumni 10+ years out. A 47% graduate-degree rate and a top-heavy professional profile are marketing and development gold — and currently invisible to prospective families.
For a school like Wexford the admit list is well known; the data that matters — and that most schools never see — is whether matriculation translates into a completed degree. It does, almost universally.
| Selectivity of college attended | Share | 6-yr complete |
|---|---|---|
| Most selective (<20% admit) | 58% | 97% |
| Highly selective (20–40%) | 26% | 96% |
| Selective (40–70%) | 13% | 94% |
| Other | 3% | 90% |
By type: private national universities 46% · liberal-arts colleges 24% · UC campuses 17% · out-of-state public flagships 11% · other 2%.
A 96% completion rate is the single most powerful — and least used — number the school owns. It is the proof, beyond any admit list, that the value proposition holds.
Joining admissions, enrollment, and giving data — two offices that almost never share — to reveal the lifetime value of an enrolled family.
The forward-looking module — current families flagged before the re-enrollment window closes, while the school can still act.
| Risk signal | Families | Leading factor | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial pressure | 14 | Aid appeal / late payment | Proactive aid conversation |
| Transition grade (8th→9th) | 9 | Re-shopping the market | Upper-school re-recruitment |
| Low engagement signals | 8 | Event / portal inactivity | Advisor outreach |
The mission question, answered with data: aided students perform exactly as well as full-pay students — there is no outcomes gap. There is, however, an access gap.
Reconstructed from public filings and association data — the one comparison no head of school can assemble alone, because peers guard their discount rates. Your school is highlighted.
| School | Tuition | Discount rate | Net tuition / student |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peer Independent A | $52,400 | 24% | $39,800 |
| Peer Independent B | $49,900 | 27% | $36,400 |
| Wexford Academy (you) | $48,500 | 18% | $39,770 |
| Peer Independent C | $47,200 | 22% | $36,800 |
| Peer Independent D | $46,800 | 31% | $32,300 |
| Peer Independent E | $45,000 | 20% | $36,000 |
| Peer Independent F | $43,500 | 25% | $32,600 |
Wexford runs the lowest discount rate in its set (18% vs. a 24% median) — strong net revenue per student, but an unused yield lever. The aid-versus-revenue tradeoff is now a board-level choice, made visible for the first time.
Where inquiries originate, overlaid with where demographically-matched families actually live. The gap is the demand going to competitors by default.
| Area | Matched households | Inquiries / yr | Opportunity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eastside (901xx) | 1,540 | 9 | Very high |
| Northridge corridor | 1,820 | 22 | High |
| Hillcrest | 1,210 | 18 | Medium |
| Coastal south | 980 | 41 | Saturated |
Three areas within six miles hold roughly 3,400 matched households but send fewer than 30 inquiries a year — your single largest pool of winnable demand, currently defaulting to competitors.
Which schools, preschools, and parishes feed Wexford — and which are quietly contracting or shifting to a rival. Most schools track this only by anecdote.
| Feeder source | Students (5-yr) | Trend | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oakmont Elementary (private) | 34 | ▲ | Strong, growing |
| Bright Beginnings Preschool | 22 | ▲ | Growing |
| Hill Country Day | 17 | ▬ | Flat |
| St. Brendan’s (parish) | 28 | ▼ | Drying up |
| Lincoln Magnet (public) | 19 | ▼ | Shifting to Peer B |
Two of your top-five historical feeders are contracting, and Lincoln’s pipeline now splits toward Peer B — the same school winning your cross-admit battles. A quiet erosion no enrollment dashboard surfaces.
Cross-admit results and the reasons admitted families decline — the levers that move yield.
| Cross-admit vs. | Families | Wexford win rate |
|---|---|---|
| Peer Independent A | 61 | 58% |
| Peer Independent B | 44 | 39% |
| Peer Independent C | 37 | 47% |
| Strong public / magnet | 52 | 66% |
Peer B is the one school Wexford loses outright — and the gap has widened two years running.
Why admitted families declined. Cost-vs-value leads by a wide margin — a messaging and aid-strategy problem more than a product one.
Demand is healthy — the constraint is conversion. The school attracts strong interest and admits selectively, but yield is where the softening shows. Bars are shares of inquiries.
Applications hold steady, but the yield drift — not demand — bends the net-tuition-revenue line. Projected against the school’s funnel, regional independent-school demand, and catchment indicators.
What each lever does to net tuition revenue — the working model CFOs rarely have, making the aid-versus-growth tradeoff explicit instead of a values debate.
| Lever | Annual Δ net revenue | 5-yr cohort Δ | Side effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restore yield to 64% (+3 pts) | +$0.5M | +$2.7M | Improves access |
| Lift re-enrollment +1 pt | +$0.4M | +$2.1M | Neutral |
| Cut discount rate 2 pts | +$0.6M | +$3.0M | Lowers yield & access |
| Yield + retention combined | +$0.9M | +$4.8M | Best on both |
Recovering yield and a point of retention beats cutting the discount on net revenue — and improves access instead of shrinking it. The model turns the tradeoff into a number.
How an engagement works — your data, your insight
Everything in this report is produced from one school’s own systems. When an engagement begins, we connect your SIS, Clearinghouse, advising, and admissions data to generate analysis no public dataset can — insight that is unique to your school because it is built from your school. Here is how that data is protected.