I agree with what varska has posted, and note that even those who do not have multiple Ivy acceptances may appeal initial financial aid awards.
Do applicants with multiple Ivy acceptances get better results than those who do not? A cynical answer would be “yes”. An answer that points to the evidentiary simplicity of a documented alternative offer from another school would also lead to a “yes” answer. But I do not know the real answer.
Here are two articles that gave me a fuller appreciation of the situation:
How do you ask for a pre-read for FA? Do you ask the coach or FA office? IfFA do you tell them you are a recruited athlete or does the coach need to do that?
Ask the coach about getting a FA pre-read. In our case the coach asked us to submit the documents to the FA office, attn: a specific person, and to let him (coach) know when we had sent the docs so he could give her (FA person) a heads up. Otherwise, he said, the docs may be sitting on someone’s desk for a long time.
My son got pre reads from a handful of Ivys. @Varska is right, as per usual, the process varied slightly school to school. A couple wanted all the forms sent to the athletic office, who then walked them over to the financial aid office, at least one other had our son send the forms to a specific person in the financial aid office, IIRC one wanted him to put a word on top of the form (I think it was the coach’s name), etc. All started though with a request by the parent to the coach for a financial aid pre read.
The way we handled it was when a coach asked my son for academic information for a full academic pre read, I would e mail the coach and ask that they conduct a financial pre read at the same time. In each case that was handled as a matter of course. Don’t know if the schools would have been so easily accommodating had we asked for a pre read earlier in the process. At least one school (cough, Harvard, cough) is supposedly stingy about providing early financial pre reads because of a perception that some students are only interested in Harvard to shop a pre read to other schools. My son was not seriously recruited by Harvard, so no idea if that is true or not. He was recruited by Yale and Princeton, and neither seemed reticent about providing a pre read. As I said up the thread, the difference in our particular circumstance between the offered aid at Yale and Princeton and other schools was pretty dramatic.
One last point about the financial aid matching policies. While it may be a distinction with out a difference at the end of the day, the agreement to match aid as explained to me by several different coaches (Cornell, Penn and Dartmouth), is not an “appeal” of an aid award. It is a commitment by the particular school to use the aid formula (x percentage of savings from the parents, y percentage from the kid, z amount of summer savings and work study, etc) applied by the matched school to determine the need of the particular prospect. The reason this is important (again, as it was explained to me) is that for people with variable income, certain types of assets, etc. each school may view different assets as “available” for college tuition and hence the numbers may vary from school to school even after matching. I assume that you can always appeal an award in that circumstance, but by the time the appeal occurs you are already admitted and assumedly well past the date to switch your commitment. Again, I have no experience with this as the school with the best aid for us out of the box also happened to be the school my kid is attending.
So I asked sevral coaches and all pointed me to the on-line version. I want to make sre we don’t make a mistake in entering the numbers to get an accurate read. Will FA offices walk us through the on-line version if we mention we are a recruited athlete?
We were directed to the online calculator as well --by an Ivy. Son has a September official so I’m puzzled by that. Son 1 had all of his pre reads done in the summer before OVs.
I believe it is pretty school and time of year dependent. In our experience, I think they averaged about two weeks after everything was submitted. But that was all done in the summer. Don’t know if doing it during the school year will effect the timing.
Just finished them for two schools and one was much more involved than the other!!! Kinda like having a root canal
I was surprised one school had us fill out CSS from College Board. I had thought that wasn’t available till Oct 1st.
Unfortunately, it’s the CSS pre-read form, so you have to type it all in to the real CSS again when the time comes. When I look back on my life, I will most definitely not treasure the hours I spent filling out FA forms…
