<p>I was an early-write, and received my financial aid package today. It's asking my family to cover over $10,000 in expenses when my FAFSA efc was only $4300. I'm rather confused on why they want us to cover so much beyond our means.</p>
<p>I've received FA packages from both Williams and Pomona, which were fairly reasonable. Should I contact the Office of FA to try and appeal or ask for more money?</p>
<p>It certainly wouldn’t hurt to try, even though it likely won’t accomplish anything. I’ll be contacting them as well, but I don’t expect a change. I was also an early-write, and very excited to go. Unfortunately, the financial aid staff essentially gave me the middle finger by offering me absolutely nothing. It would have been a stretch to afford it with average aid, but I would have tried to make it work. Unless the situation changes drastically, (and it won’t), I will not be attending Swarthmore this fall. Hopefully they listen to your request and make the necessary adjustments. Good luck!</p>
<p>I also got a pretty unreasonable offer. I’m very surprised, considering that Swarthmore’s ranked as the best financial aid program in the nation. Not so for me.</p>
<p>Yes. You should absolutely contact the financial aid office. </p>
<p>Send them your Williams and Pomona aid offers so they can see what is being factored differently. Usually, you don’t see big disparities. When you do, it’s usually an unusual situation like divorced parents, investment property, or what have you – stuff that might be open to “interpretation”. They could have missed a second kid in college. A million different things. There are plenty of cases where Swarthmore changes it’s aid package if they’ve missed something and plenty of cases where they haven’t. I think they would encourage you to contact them for a review. Generally speaking, Swarthmore, Williams, and Pomona should have pretty much the same financial aid packages, so I’m sure they would love the opportunity to see why they came up with a different number.</p>
<p>Alright, thank you all for your input. Swat is flying me up for Ride the Tide, so I will schedule an appointment with the Office of Financial Aid and see what I can do. I mean, I have nothing really to lose.</p>
<p>I had an EFC of $5000 and Swarthmore gave me $25,000. Bowdoin only gave me $15,000…so you’re not the only one.</p>
<p>Everyone tells me if you can convince a college that they are your number one, they may be able to increase financial aid a bit. I hope it works for you!</p>
<p>I don’t think saying they are #1 will make any difference at the Swarthmore financial aid office. It’s all about the numbers. As I mentioned above, when you see large discrepancies in aid offers from schools that are usually the same, it’s almost always because something was either overlooked or counted differently. </p>
<p>The effective approach would be to take the other offer so the aid office can see what was being counted, looking for differences in income or expenses that would account for the discrepancy.</p>