Year 1 Application/Tuition

For those applying for Year One:

If you have guests or friends who would like to register for the School, please let them know that the application deadline is October 1 (this date may change from year to year, check with the team at the start of each year for the application deadline).  After that, no applications will be accepted.  Once the application period closes, the registration for the year will be finalized and lanyards will be printed and mailed to us.

Sometimes, students have a difficult time finding the emails regarding acceptance or tuition or their invitation to the Canvas dashboard. This can be for many reasons: (a) the email could have gone to their junk/spam or trash folders; (b) they get many emails and they don’t recognize the emails from encounter; (c) there was some difficulty in the sending of the email and it never reached the student. In most cases, we find that the student received the email but somehow never saw it.

If you are having a difficult time finding the emails or knowing your status, it can be helpful to know the process and what the emails look like to help you search for them in your email software.

The Process. 

1. Potential Student applies to Encounter School of Ministry (ESM)
2. A Confirmation Email is sent to the applicant stating the following:
   “We have received your application to the Encounter School of Ministry. Your application will be reviewed in the near future and you can expect to receive an email for further instruction by a member of our staff within no less than two weeks. If you have any questions about the application process, please contact us through our Student Support Center at https://encounterschool.org/esm-student-support-home/.
3. The application is reviewed (this process can take 2-3 weeks, so please be patient). If accepted, the student is added to the ESM Student Dashboard on Canvas.
4. The student is sent an acceptance email. The email has the following features (below) that you can use to search for it if you are having difficulty finding it. If you want to see more details about what is included in the acceptance email, you can see an example that was sent in 2025 to the Class of 2027 here: https://encounterschooldc.org/email-acceptance/
   • From: Encounter School Admissions <admissions@encounterschool.org.
   • Subject: Encounter School of Ministry Acceptance!
   • Body: Dear ____,
     Congratulations! You have been accepted into the Encunter School of Ministry. After a thorough review of your application, identifying your desire to attend the Encounter School stood out to us… (click here for a full sample of the email)
5. The student is sent an invoice by email 24 hours after the acceptance email is sent.
6. The student is sent an invitation email from Canvas to activate and setup their dashboard. NOTE: the student MUST click on the link to accept the invitation to access and setup their account. The dashboard in Canvas is their central hub for student information, communications, schedules, class recordings, syllabi, and links to several other important resources. For more information on getting setup in Canvas, click on the “Dashboard Problems?” tab above.

Tuition payment

Once the acceptance letter arrives, students have 15 days to pay the invoice.  All of the payment information is included in the letter. Students can pay quarterly or get a discount for paying in full. Tuition payments are due on the first day of the Quarter.  Obviously, if you are still awaiting your acceptance letter, this date does not apply.

How the tuition portal works:

Once the student is accepted, ESM enables the tuition portal for the student and they are sent an invitation to set-up their tuition account on Zoho. The student should accept the tuition portal invitation so that you can access your account at any time. Best practice: choose to make it match your canvas account (same email & password) which would allow you to easily get to the tuition portal via a link within Canvas. If you setup your tuition portal with a different password than your Canvas account, you’ll simply need to remember two sets of passwords (or have your browser save them).

If a student attempts to log-in without accepting the portal invitation and setting up their account, it would come back with no account found.

Note from ESM: To make it easier for students, I ALWAYS suggest they skip the tuition portal and look for the invoice that is emailed directly to them. The subject line they should be looking for is: “Tuition Invoice [Invoice #] from Encounter School of Ministry“. The email would look something like this:

For students who have already been accepted and have not yet paid, Brighton sends out payment reminders – please do not ignore these notices. At some point, if payment is not received, they will drop students from the roster. So, if you are having problems in this area, please let us know so that we can assist you.  

In the event that a student is dropped and cannot access the student dashboard, they will be able to fill out a Student Reactivation Request Form. This form can also be found on the Student Support Center. Once their invoice is paid, they will be given access to their dashboard once again.

All tuition must be paid online via credit or debit card. Cash or checks are not accepted.

Further Assistance—Open a Ticket at ESM

If you cannot find the emails described above, please contact ESM support directly. All enrollment and tuition issues are handled by the main ESM office. To open a support ticket, please go to: https://encounterschool.org/esm-student-support-on-site/#tuition