Amid budget cuts, the Laboratory Schools have increased tuition, and U-High has welcomed 17 new students.
U-High tuition has increased by 4.89% and now sits at $44,592 for the 2024-25 school year. Laboratory Schools tuition overall increased by a weighted average of 5.74% from early childhood to high school.
“We want you to know that your tuition dollars, our largest source of revenue by far, are directed to critical expenses for the sake of maintaining the excellence of our program,” Director of Schools Tori Jueds wrote in a February email to families. “Lab seeks to ensure that our world-class team of educators — teachers, coaches, deans, counselors, advisors, and staff — are competitively compensated.”
Ms. Jueds described the slight uptick across Lab as “balancing the goal of keeping Lab accessible against the need to meet carefully curated expenses.”
This year, U-High has 13 new ninth graders and four new juniors.
John Mangum, one of the new juniors, had found out about his admission to Lab relatively late. He had around a month to fill out the necessary forms before moving to Chicago from Houston, Texas. He said that despite the late notice, the process was relatively smooth.
“We have a couple family friends here who have kids at Lab and they love it, they referred us to Lab, and we met some people, talked with some faculty and it was a very positive experience,” he said. “So far all of the teachers have been very accommodating, very nice, everyone’s been very welcoming and it’s been a good experience.”
Despite the increased tuition and budget cuts, Lab’s reputation seems unaffected and is still a sought after school.
