Colleges that negotiate? Examples?

I believe it had to do with the EFC. They own their own business and I think this was taken into consideration.

@homerdog - Most (probably nearly all) of the “negotiating” and matching of peer schools’ offers is only applicable to need-based financial aid.

A school that does NOT give merit (like Carleton) won’t suddenly offer merit to match another school’s merit aid (even if the other school is higher ranked). A school that DOES give merit might up their offer if there is money available (but merit usually is not negotiable – although you might be able to get a summer stipend out of them…).

Also, schools are pretty set in what they will consider a peer (e.g., Yale told us flat out that they would only consider HP and S as peer schools – not UChicago). When schools did reconsider, they only considered the FA portion, not the merit (D had gotten both from Chicago). There are things that schools can do to fiddle with need-based aid criteria (e.g., not look at home equity or look differently at expenses).

Right @LoveTheBard

Our kid got a HUGE merit award from an OOS public university that would have brought her annual coat of attendance to under $10,000 a year.

However, her first choice school was a smaller private that cost twice as much or more to begin with. That $10,000 net cost to us was NEVER going to be met by that private university. We knew that was not going to even be a consideration.

We did bring our kid’s award from a peer school…and oddly, the top choice school added a Perkins loan and federal work study to our kid’s aid. And let’s just say…we are NOT and were not low income. To this day, we can’t quite figure that out! But they didn’t add a nickel of Grant or scholarship money.

@homerdog - I sympathize. My immigrant MIL and SIL were convinced that my kid would have scholarships thrown at her because of being Latina. In the end I just had to smile and nod. What can be possible in some circumstances is not always possible in all circumstances. I do agree that families with need should carefully examine all of the aid packages, and ask for formal reevaluation of packages that result in greater final costs to the family.

@happymomof1 on the basis of what? I think just about everyone wishes their final costs were lower. Are you suggesting that every single kid who thinks their costs are too high ask for a re-evaluation of their aid award?

  1. Some colleges are very clear. They don’t ever do this...at all...for anyone.
  2. Some colleges will only reevaluate an award if there is some substantiative change to the financial situation between when applications were submitted and when the award letter was issued...loss of a parent income, unreimbursed essential medical expenses, etc.
  3. Some colleges will compare offers from what they view as peer schools only. And even then, the increase in aid might not be what the parent hopes for.
  4. These are handled on a case by case basis at each college.

If EVERY student who thought their aid was not enough asked the schools to reevaluate, my gut feeling is that re-evaluation would go the way of the dinosaur.

And especially NOW when the net price calculators are available on college websites…and can give a decent estimate of net costs BEFORE the applications are even sent.

Just want to be clear about our situation. We’ve already made our decisions and we know we won’t be negotiating. I’m just curious when this has worked for others, which schools were involved, and what the situation was.

@thumper1 - If they are peers and it is need-based aid, I think it makes perfect sense to ask for a second read if the packages come back very different. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to wave the other aid package under an aid officer’s nose. It can mean just asking for clarification about the factors in the formula and verifying that all the needed information had indeed arrived - how many times on this forum have people reminded each other to not leave any money on the table? Sometimes a piece of paper has indeed got lost. Granted, for people without anything particularly special in their financial lives, the Net Price Calculators should be good predictors, so there shouldn’t be huge surprises for those families. And, given that each place has its own aid formula, in the end the various packages can still be very different.

This financial advisor on tv made it sound like negotiating is a tool families should use. That’s not quite right. It’s not an option for most.

Really, this is about a TV show (maybe an advert even). Your MIL could have been watching a show that said if you pray enough, some unseen deity of choice will send you money. That is pretty much the same as citing what some bloke said on TV said. Financial adviser is a self designated title, like a nutritionist or a personal trainer. Your bog standard skim off the top FA knows diddly squat about college FA.

The truth is that lots and lots of students do try to negotiate, and I believe it is because there are people out there - like the person @homerdog 's family member heard - saying that anyone can get the price knocked down if they just try. I think the success of this tactic is overrated, but it is definitely being tried.

You can’t get aggravated every time a family member or a friend suggests that you’re a moron for sending your kid wherever you send your kid; in turn, they get their information from the morons who appear on the radio, tv, some blog titled 'Only idiots are full pay".

People believe you can get an athletic scholarship to Yale. People believe that Dartmouth has a team of financial aid officers sitting by the phone waiting to hear what U Maine and U NH offered you so they can “counter”. People believe that if MIT really wanted your kid, they’d “make it worth your while” to turn down Macauley, Lehigh, and Drexel.

But people also believe that vaccines cause autism and that if you are diagnosed with breast cancer, your best bet is a naturopath who will put you on a macrobiotic diet and help you use herbal supplements to prevent the cancer from metastisizing. And they believe that diet soda causes alzheimer’s, and that the flu vaccine is a plot by the federal government to reduce fertility among racial minorities.

So given that- family members who think you can get a merit scholarship from Harvard seems benign. Annoying, but benign.

But to answer the question- I’ve heard from friends/neighbors that if Hofstra sees a better offer (in writing) from LIU or Adelphi they are prepared to negotiate. If Pace sees a better offer from Marist or Seton Hall you might get a second read. If you call Sacred Heart with a more aggressive package from Fairfield and are prepared to tell them up front “He will attend if you match” that could work.

But Georgetown, Cornell, Columbia, Northwestern, Brown, Princeton? Good luck.

Any school will review new information (your house burned down; breadwinner died two weeks ago). And truth be told, you likely have a BETTER shot at an adjustment with the colleges with the stronger endowments than trying to get LIU to come up with a merit package that rivals a generous need based package from Princeton.

But you knew that already.

A million years ago, I asked for (and got) a reduction in the expected student summer earnings, because I was out of the country on an exchange program and would only have six weeks to earn it in. My (likely unreliable, due to passage of time) memory is that I requested it be reduced by 50%, and the school waived it entirely.

In that sort of unusual (and unknowable by the school) situation, I think it’s worth asking. But you really need a reason other than, “I want to pay less.”

I really hate when some goes on television stating that you can negotiate your financial aid package.
No one is negotiating a financial aid package like you would negotiate the cost of a car.

@homerdog

Schools are very open and upfront about applying for an appeal of your financial aid award or requesting a financial review (these are the correct terminologies, not negotiate).

I know at our house, Dartmouth use to have on their financial aid review forms to submit the financial aid offer from a peer school (Dartmouth was D’s first choice but Williams was a more financially feasible option where she would have been more than happy to attend). I called the school (during Dimensions, when she told me it was her first choice) discussed it with financial aid office and sent the forms. Williams was not the best overall package, but I was cutting to the chase and was only going to do this with her top 2 choices. With in a day, Dartmouth met the Williams package, I said she would attend, she went and is a happy grad who bleeds green.

Just because a school has a written policy about not negotiating doesn’t mean they never will. I have seen cases where a student was comparing multiple schools and some schools came up with some kind of extra help (increased grant, found a seldom used school scholarship). It obviously depends on the school, the attractiveness of the student and probably other factors such as current enrollment statistics.

I agree that everyone shouldn’t just blindly ask. But if a student is deciding between two schools and one is offering more money, I personally would forward the offer to the other school even if they have a policy not to match. In fact, maybe they won’t match but they may sweeten the offer a bit.

It can work if the student has highly specialized achievements and the school is also highly specialized in that area (and typically private). That worked for me, in combination with a GPA and SAT score that was well into the upper %s for the school (which was probably the larger factor). Still, they ended up making concessions they wouldn’t have solely on the basis of objective stats.

But that situation is rare, as most HS students aren’t coming out of HS highly specialized – nor are most universities highly specialized in one field.

I think it depends a lot on circumstances. My sh kept trying to tell me he was going to do a big negotiation for our d19 when shebfotnaccepted to colleges. I kept telling him it wasn’t going to work the way he thought. Her most likely two were 1) a college that meets full need as they define it and we have no special circumstances and 2) a public where we already knew she would get the highest available merit and there would be to FA based award.

He kept giving me examples from people at work but I finally got him to see those examples were a combination of special circumstances (twins going to the same school) and kids who got some merit but not the highest so the negotiation got them to a higher level of offered merit.

We ended up only meeting with FA at one (meets full need) and he could see very quickly before even asking that we weren’t going to have any sort of special circumstances giving more need. Realistically, he could also see that they were fair with the need based aid they already offered.

Anyway, rambling but I can see why people automatically think there is negotiating room but also that people need to critically analyze the schools and their situations to decide whether there is a realistic shot at meaningful negotiations.

@sybbie719 I can concur with the statement regarding Duke. The aid that our daughter received from MIT was financially better than the one received from Duke (not a huge amount, but still less). We did reach out to the financial aid office at Duke, and also got more detailed information during an admitted student event, but since there was no change in finances, they did not budge. They do a great deal of explaining why though. Regardless of where your child chooses to live on campus, rather it is the fancy nice new dorm in a single, or the older dorm in a double, your financial aid rises to cover the difference. If you have the cheapest dining plan, or the most expensive one, your aid will also rise to cover the difference. They also have the DukeEngage program, which is fully funded, and also takes money off of your costs the semester following your participation.

S12’s favorite school came back with a net price higher than another school he’d gotten into. They were peers, relatively low ranked privates (not schools CC obsesses over).

We asked the first choice if they could match the other because he really wanted to go there but cost was a big factor. They upped his merit award to match the other and, as he said he would if they did that, he went there.

I think the difference was about $5k. And not need based.

Financial aid awards can be appealed & revised depending on circumstances.

That can include requesting additional merit money that the student reasonably may qualify for.

It can include asking the school whether they will match the award from a peer institution.

And for need-based aid, it can include asking for reconsideration based on specific economic factors or asking for the exercise of professional judgment to increase award amounts.

You are correct that a full-pay family at a top-20 university probably has little chance of getting any financial aid-- for the most part those schools don’t offer merit aid to most students. It’s different somewhat down the selectivity chain among schools that depend on merit aid to attract strong students. Those schools are often using sophisticated predictive algorithms to try to figure out exactly how much aid they need to offer in order to secure the student’s attendance.

For a family eligible for need-based aid it would be quite different, especially with more complicated financial situations. I always found it helpful to go over the need-based award with a financial aid rep, because sometimes that was fruitful because of factors that could be considered but had not been taken into account. For colleges that offer so-called full (100%) need to all students, there’s not a lot of wiggle room – the college has already offered the maximum they think the student qualifies for, so it really is a matter of finding specific facts that justify more.

For colleges that leverage their need-based aid and don’t claim to always meet full need, or for colleges that combine need with merit – there is more wiggle room. Students admitted to NYU routinely appeal their awards, and NYU routinely throws a small amount of extra money at those students.

I’d point out also that it also depends on the state of the financial aid budget-- so during April funds can get freed up when admitted students who were offered large awards decline their spots. But again, that’s not top-20 scenario – that is the sort of thing that happens at schools with lower yields. They are essentially engaging in a bidding war to attract top students — so probably very worthwhile for a student who is willing to attend but not willing to pay the offered price to let the college know of their position.