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Last April, John Strubulis played a game of chicken with the college his daughter wanted to attend, Butler University. If he won, his family would save $20,000 in tuition. If he lost, she would head to her second choice, Marquette University.
Mr. Strubulis, a product manager for a packaging company with decades of experience negotiating contracts, had written Butler a letter asking for more financial aid. The school politely declined, he said.
So as the deadline for picking a school drew near, Mr. Strubulis sat at his kitchen table and wrote a second letter to Butler indicating that while his daughter loved the school, she had a better deal to study somewhere else.
His daughter was nervous. “She said, ‘Dad, don’t mess this up!’” Mr. Strubulis said.
Schools including Butler University say they aim to make their best financial-aid offer upfront. Photo: Jonathan Weiss/Alamy
More families around the country are taking the once-unheard-of step of negotiating financial aid with colleges before the May 1 deadline, when most schools expect students to commit.
Colleges have long held most of the information, and therefore the leverage, in these negotiations, but that may be changing. Pandemic-era declines in both enrollment and faith in higher education mean many middle-market colleges have weaker hands to play. Entrepreneurs and savvy parents are creating websites that post information to help other prospective students understand the opaque world of a college’s finances.
The best-case scenario for families is to leverage that information to start a bidding war between schools for their tuition dollars.
Mr. Strubulis used a relatively new website to find out how much money Butler was giving to students whose academic and financial profile was comparable to his daughter’s.
Colleges offer students two types of financial aid. The first is need-based aid. Families fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and other forms outlining their income and assets. Colleges use a formula to determine how much money a family should pay based on that information.
The second is merit-based aid, which schools began doling out about 40 years ago to encourage favored students to enroll. This money is distributed by schools as they see fit.
Schools often say they try to limit confusion and negotiation by making their best offer first.
“At Marquette, we try to be clear and upfront and not create a game,” said Brian Troyer, dean of undergraduate admissions. Marquette’s website says less than 2% of financial-aid appeals are accepted.
Lori Greene, Butler University’s vice president for enrollment management, echoed that sentiment in an email: “Our best aid offer is provided upfront.”
For decades, schools made an offer, and families either accepted or rejected it, said Joel Peck, a certified public accountant and expert in financial-aid negotiations.
“Most people think you negotiate over the cost of a house or a car but not college, college is somehow different,” he said.
TuitionFit is a crowdsourced website that allows students to see merit-aid offers given to comparable students.
As tuition and debt have skyrocketed, pressure has grown for more transparency in college pricing. Mr. Peck is part of a growing class of consultants who offer advice on how best to negotiate for more merit aid. He charges $1,800 per student and says he averages discounts of more than $10,000 a year.
Starting about a decade ago, more families began to appeal the financial-aid award. A 2022 survey taken by Sallie Mae, a major student-loan purveyor, reported 40% of students appealed their aid package. Three-quarters of those did so on the grounds that their finances had changed. Only 10% appealed because they had a better offer from another school.
Schools are required to post net-price calculators to help families estimate costs, but they are not always accurate.
This asymmetry of information gives schools the edge in negotiations, said Neeta Vallab, who founded a free website for managing admissions processes called MeritMore.com after muscling through her daughter’s financial-aid process in 2019.
“It’s like playing poker with the devil,” she said. “Parents are always at a disadvantage.”
Mark Salisbury, the former dean of academic affairs and director of institutional research and assessment at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., created a crowdsourced website called TuitionFit that allows students to enter their grade-point average, ACT or SAT score and family’s financial status to see merit-aid offers given to comparable students in real-time. To date the site has collected about 30,000 prices in its data set from about 10,000 students, he said.
“It’s like a Kelley Blue Book of college prices,” says Mr. Salisbury. “The idea is to give every family the knowledge and the leverage to advocate for a fair price and the best price.”
Mr. Strubulis heard about TuitionFit from a friend and posted his daughter’s information. The site showed him that similar students had received better offers from Butler, which prompted him to write the second letter asking for more financial aid.
Butler came back with an added $5,000 a year in scholarships, reducing his daughter’s total cost to $148,000 over four years, he said.
“It’s a big chunk of change,” Mr. Strubulis said. “I think negotiating is absolutely appropriate