Ross School sits in the watch range. The school holds only 12 months of operating cushion, unusually thin for a boarding school's residential capex load. Revenue runs 96% tuition-dependent (HiveCheck peer-group median 82%), heavier than the boarding cohort typically carries, so the cushion does real work. Staff compensation runs 43% of expenses, well below the peer median, worth understanding why. Three-year net-asset trend is negative (-16.6%/yr), indicating reserve drawdown. NACUBO Composite Financial Index: 1.5 / 10, watch.
Ross School operates at 96% tuition dependency — among the most tuition-reliant 3% of peers in its cohort. A soft admissions year would flow straight to operations.
Ross School reported $23.2M in revenue against $30.2M in expenses in fiscal year 2023, the most recent filing on record. Net assets stood at $31.2M — about 1.03x annual operating expense.
Operating margin landed at -30.2%, with 96.2% of revenue coming from tuition. Among same-size peers, that puts Ross School at the p0 on operating margin.
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Why “revenue scale” and not “endowment per student”: independent-school 990s don’t carry per-school enrollment, and NCES PSS coverage is partial, so we cannot divide endowment by a verified student count for every school. The bar above is each school’s latest reported total revenue. True endowment-per-student is scheduled for v1.1+ once Schedule D Part V parsing lands.
Peers are scored by similarity along three equal-weighted dimensions: size cohort (Form 990 employee count + max-revenue tier, a proxy for student enrollment, which the 990 does not carry), geographic region (eight-region grouping), and association overlap (NAIS, NBOA, regional councils). We rank the top 20 nearest peers and chart the first 12 by latest reported revenue. Values are the school’s most recently filed total revenue on IRS Form 990.