I have not blogged in a little while. I have been so busy working to keep my little school afloat during extremely tough economic times. With Sallie Mae's decision to quit lending to students of small massage schools like mine to the catastrophic global economy, it is not a small miracle that we are still here. Enrollment numbers dropped drastically for a couple of our classes, but even that did not stop us. I poured my life savings into my school with the faith that we would survive and find new ways to bring in new students for the education and experience they wanted and deserved.
Last March, when I learned that Sallie Mae would quit lending, I launched a campaign to become a full-fledged Title IV school. I was able to achieve this because the school is already accredited, which is one of the qualifications for application. Becoming a Title IV school means that we can accept students through Federal financial aid, including Pell grants, Stafford Loans and other great financial options for students. The task was costly, both monetarily and physically. Just the extensive financial audits took a period of weeks, and the detailed data and paperwork that was required was astounding. But we persevered, and last July, we were granted our Title IV school approval.
Since July, we also launched a fully automated on-line Virtual Financial Aid Office to handle the entire Financial Aid process for our students. While our dedicated staff provide general guidance as our students go through this process, we have an entire company working for us to do all the actual processing of the applications and they are responsible for the packaging of loans and grants for our students, and makes sure they receive the best possible combination of Federal Financial Aid.
We have seen a tremendous upturn in our admissions applications and enrollments for our Fall class. Our Winter class is two-thirds full already, and we still have many weeks to continue to receive applications. Our maximum capacity for our Winter class is 64 (2 classes of 32). Based on the data we are seeing, we will easily have waiting lists for our classes next year. So, if you are reading this, and planning on attending our program, please submit your application early.
It is amazing how the universe works. When the economy and banking industry collapsed, it was imminent that we would collapse right along with them. So many business and schools have. But it didn't happen this way. With the right heart and the right intentions, intuition played a big part in the decision to go out on a limb and risk everything to survive, and survive we did. The school has never had a brighter outlook, better energy or a more enthusiastic team of talented staff members. They were fighting for their life and well being just as much as I was. And as a whole, we all made it.
I am grateful to God, to my amazing staff and to my keen instincts that we survived this crisis, and look into the future with hope, determination and pride knowing we will be able to continue to send wonderful new healing-arts practitioners out into the world and make it a better place for everyone they touch.
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