<p>Does BU negotiate financial aid if another school offers more?</p>
<p>no idea, but u could shoot for it. the valedictorian at my high school got into princeton and harvard & got more fin aid from princeton but wanted to go to harvard, so his dad called and said “listen, my son really wants to go to harvard, but princeton gave him $5500 and you only gave him $3000” so harvard upped it to $6000 and he went there.</p>
<p>It will mostly depend on how badly they want you.</p>
<p>hahaha yea, this kid was in high demand by all the ivies.</p>
<p>Most schools will do that as long as the other school is equally competitive.</p>
<p>I appealed my financial aid package but they denied it. BU is giving me about half of what NEU is giving me :(</p>
<p>BU is giving me jack ****</p>
<p>Yeah, I was kind of shocked at the difference between BU’s aid and NEU’s. I thought BU would give me around the same amount, considering my EFC is 0, single parent home, college bound sibling. Very disappointing.</p>
<p>My understanding is that aid is not allocated solely to each admittee’s need but also by how that person ranks in the particular college’s pool. I doubt they rank 1 by 1 by 1 but I don’t know. Northeastern may believe there’s a better shot of you going there. It’s hard to tell though there is logic behind the numbers. </p>
<p>Some schools don’t negotiate at all. Northwestern says they won’t. BU will but I don’t know how that works.</p>
<p>I think thats right lergnom. You have to consider how you rank in that schools application pool. BU also accepts about half of their applicants (somewhere around 17,000 students I believe), and they know they can’t accept all of them (they are actually aiming for a class of about 4,100), so the best people get the best offers to encourage them to come there.</p>
<p>It’s a question of how many well qualified people they can extend an acceptance to and not yield too many people, in order to maintain the school’s reputation and quality of education. Money is simply used to weed people out.</p>
<p>BU does not negotiate financial aid awards. They have so many applicants that they don’t have to negotiate to get their class.</p>
<p>whether they negotiate or not i don’t know, but they accept appeals. a friend of mine appealed after her father lost his job and got an additional $5000 in aid.</p>
<p>Article linked in another thread says they get some hundreds of appeals and change numbers for half.</p>
<p>If by negotiate you mean “match another school’s offer,” then no. They don’t. But as other posters said, you can appeal.</p>
<p>So if I want to get more money, what should I write in the letter? I was thinking of saying that another school gave me X amount and that they should match that or come close to it, but will that not help them? I just need them to give me like $5,000 more and I’ll be so much happier!</p>
<p>An appeal is more like “I can’t afford to come. Here’s why.”</p>
<p>If you want to appeal your financial aid award, you need to provide information in the appeal letter that will better help clarify your family’s specific circumstances. If there is something that was not reported or you need to demystify an item on the FAFSA or Profile, then you should definitely mention that. But, saying one school is giving you more money than BU is not going to make you eligible for additional aid. It’s not going to work. You should address the appeal letter to the assistant director who is reviewing your application. That is what it says on the web site: [Boston</a> University - Office of Financial Assistance - Contacting the Office of Financial Assistance](<a href=“http://www.bu.edu/finaid/contact/index.html#written]Boston”>http://www.bu.edu/finaid/contact/index.html#written)
The entire information of how to appeal and what to do is all listed here: [Boston</a> University - Office of Financial Assistance - Special Circumstances](<a href=“http://www.bu.edu/finaid/special/appeal.html]Boston”>http://www.bu.edu/finaid/special/appeal.html)</p>