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[quote]
In an age when colleges are using sophisticated strategic enrollment programs to cull the best students when they are in high school, there's no reason why you can't take advantage of their system to garner the best aid package.</p>
<p>For that, you will need to be more aggressive. Approach aid departments and request merit aid if your child has a special skill or a stellar academic record.
<p>Yeah.. not much actual data on how successful people are in doing the lobbying! And he could have done a much better job of letting people know which colleges promise no loans for ALL students with need.</p>
<p>We tried at a few schools....for the most part...it reaped about a $1000 more with proof of our need. Once after an illness -we turned work study into a grant. Otherwise, at least as a freshman...I think haggling may have even made the fin-aid counselors defensive. They feel they already are fairly allocating funds.</p>
<p>If your student is 'stellar' or an athelete...or some other outstanding characteristic...go for it. Some Financial aid and college application assistance tyep conferences/programs (the kinds that hold their meetings at local hotels) make these same kinds of claims. I haven't found it true except for relatively small amounts that probably would have been offered anyway within the fin-aid department;s ability to exercise judgement for situations of genuine need.</p>
<p>I'd love to hear from others who believe they were successful at turning loan offers into grants or scholarhips and what 'leverage' they used.</p>
<p>Appeal your aid offer, and the BEST way to do it is to show your dream school a better offer from another school in their league. Usually works like a charm. This approach tells your dream school, "I'd prefer to go to your school, but money has to be a factor in my decision." NEVER let your parents write the letter. Keep the appeal to not more than 4-5 lines, and be non-emotional and straight-forward.</p>
<p>To add to that list, we know from experience that Reed College will do this for certain students, as will the University of California system. In both cases, the loan replacement was as an additional grant award replacing loans and work study. Both were that hybrid of need/merit based: offered to low-EFC students the schools considered particularly strong candidates. UC's program is the "Regent Scholars" and Reed's is "Presidential Scholars".</p>
<p>finaids info is out-of-date for some schools. Example is Rice - now loanfree for all families below $60,000, loan cap for all incomes at $14,525.</p>