FinAid

<p>Is there anything I could possibly do to get more aid offered to me?
ND is my number one choice and I would do ANYTHING to attend!
It has been my dream school and I was admitted early action...I have felt like I was on cloud-9 from december...until i got my finaid :(</p>

<p>did you contact a fin-aide officer directly ?? if you can, actually make an appt - physically showing up counts for a lot in this world, may as well learn that sooner rather than later. put together a little “case” for yourself. indeed, there is a lot of misinformation and mystery on how fin-aide actually works, and sometimes things can be done. our initial offer was not our final deal. </p>

<p>you haven’t said much in the way of detail, so i can tell you that much ( above ), anyway.</p>

<p>I agree with bitti…contact the Financial Aid office directly and see if you can set up a phone conference or meeting in person.</p>

<p>Also…if what you received looks significantly different than your EFC…double-check that ALL of your forms were sent in properly and received. One of the schools I applied to guaranteed 100% financial aid, but because one one-page form was not received, I got 25% of the aid I needed. Just double-check to be safe!</p>

<p>My experience has been (after contacting financial aid, asking for a review, etc,) that the office does not really reconsider their financial aid. They said they would take a look again next year. I understand how you feel, since I will probably have to turn down ND for a state school COMPLETELY because of finances.</p>

<p>in fineform’s case they did not, in our case they most certainly did. why ?? who knows ?? one thing is certain, you will not know until you try.</p>

<p>Got my package after much to-do; had to go through the honors program and get someone to move things along for me (bless them). </p>

<p>ND’s package ended up being 10k more expensive a year than Rice, Vandy, and UVA (wow).</p>

<p>3 admission cycles ago, (he’ll be a sr. at ND next year) my s’s fa at ND was also 10k more expensive than at Vandy, Yale, and Duke. These 3 schools all matched each other when asked. All 4 schools, including ND, also increased aid when presented with a letter documenting high medical expenses. The year after that, these 3 schools all went to no-loan policies.</p>

<p>It was 10k more expensive and he still went?</p>

<p>last year, ND’s initial package was about that much better than MIT, cornell, and U chicago. after a few other things, it got even better after a meeting with the fin-aide office in the last week of april. </p>

<p>i still believe that there is a lot of misinformation about fin-aide at ND out there, to the negative and in general. there certainly is based on our experience. we did not give up, and things worked out tremendously. as an aside, in another thread somebody advised asking fin-aide pointed and direct sorta questions. we used a softer approach. no matter what you believe about ND and fin-aide - i think it is clear that they like to play with their cards close to their chest. i advise a respectful and earnest, yet thorough approach. 11th hour adjustments are still possible, based on our experience.</p>