Hello! My UChicago Financial Aid Award was just released and it is… significantly less than what the NPC estimated. More than thirteen thousand dollars less.
Is this normal? Our income has dropped in comparison to 2015, and we’d have to really stretch to make this work. Is it even worth trying to appeal?
If you can substantiate and can show some competitors that offer more, you might give it a try.
Parent of a 4th year here. I’ve found that the financial aid office listens. I’ve had 3 interactions, one of which was before finally deciding to enroll. My record is 2 wins and 1 loss, but they listened in every case. As artloverplus points out above, if you can point to a better offer from a peer school, I would be it would get their attention. Good luck.
@cecil1994 were you accepted EA or ED/EDII?
@JBStillFlying ED- some part of me didn’t think I stood a chance of acceptance at all, and decided to maximize my odds. Not the best bargaining position, I know- but I’d rather pay a little more than not go at all, I suppose?
Will definitely submit an appeals form in the next few days, at least.
@cecil1994 if you withdrew from other institutions in January, as per the ED agreement, you might not have a competing aid package to show them, correct? So that option may not be available. However, I’m a bit confused that you just now got your aid package given that you were accepted ED in December? Weren’t you guys on the hook to review your aid package and enroll back in January?
I’m also surprised that your aid package came out so different from the NPC. We used the exact same numbers for the NPC as for the FASA (based on 2015 W2’s and 1099’s etc.) and I also spoke to FA before we signed the EDII agreement. While they, of course, couldn’t commit to an aid package right at that time, they were very good about helping us establish some reasonable parameters of what to expect. The aid package my daughter just received was pretty much consistent with - in fact, a bit better than - what we were expecting and definitely better than the NPC aid amount.
It is important to remember that the NPC might be based on last year’s tuition and fees, not 2016-17 (even though the NPC says “2016-17”). FA for Next Year is presented with This Year’s numbers, so FA for This Year (replicated on the NPC) is presented with Last Year’s numbers. Very, very confusing. However, you shouldn’t have been off by $13,000 - something is wrong there. So definitely contact FA and see what’s up. Especially if 2016 is lower than 2015, you should be able to present that as evidence that your aid package should be reconsidered.
However, if they are not able to adjust your aid package at this late date then you’ll need to make some tough decisions about your application status. It’s complicated with ED, as you know.
Good luck to you!
@cecil1994 let me amend the above post ^^ - looks like you were JUST accepted - i.e., EDII, not ED in December? I just ran across another post of yours on the EDII thread regarding NMF that I had actually answered! Sorry for the confusion - I was thrown when you said ED . . . UChicago certainly has made things complicated with the different early application plans this year!!! LOL.
OK . . .you probably DO have other aid packages that are becoming available so that option is a good one if it works. The rest of the advice holds - making them aware of a change in income beginning 2016, etc. I’d start with that as a basis of your appeal or discussion. Of course EDII, like ED, is binding - but if you can’t attend due to a FA surprise then there is probably an out.
ED/EDII definitely isn’t going to be the best bargaining situation, as you aptly pointed out, but we discovered when my daughter was deferred from EA in December that UChicago wasn’t exactly looking to give her a huge merit scholarship anyway! 
BTW, hopefully you specified UChicago as your First Choice with National Merit Corp. so your name was included on the March 1 list. Do you know anything about the NM funds? Last year and prior it was $4,000 guaranteed - this year, who knows? Information is rather vague on the website. Fortunately, any NM funds you receive will adjust your work study or summer earnings expectation, but not your grants.
Ok! So, my situation is rather complicated- I applied ED and got rejected, it turned out my guidance counselor had sent in some other kid’s transcript, UChicago decided to reconsider me ED2, I got in. It’s been a bit of a ride.
Unfortunately, I still don’t have any other aid packages to compare this to, because of the timing of it all. And I vaguely remember seeing on their site that this year’s NMF scholarship is $2000 a year? Could be wrong, though.
But I did put UChicago as my first choice for it. And I used the 2015 data for NPC, and 2016 is even lower. So hopefully the situation will improve.
Good lord! That IS complicated!!!
UChicago guarantees that they will cover 100% of the difference between Cost of Attendance (currently 72,000 but will go up once the new tuition and other costs are announced) and your family’s contribution (their calculation, not FAFSA’s). Thinking your best line of discussion will be the 2016 income being lower. Thought I read somewhere that schools will definitely take that into consideration given that they make decisions off prior-prior income (instead of prior like they used to. The lag can really hurt a family with significant swings in yearly income).
$2,000 a year seems to be the current consensus for NMF scholarship money and not sure that’s guaranteed for each NMF like it used to be. Really hoping something comes through for my daughter so that she can get a portion of her work-study waived. We’ll see.
It all depends on whether you have substantial capital gains etc. Something in your Profile has resulted in your lower financial aid award. Best solution: call the financial aid office.