<p>Just tried to negotiate for a little more aid with the University of Kentucky so we can make a final decision on college. Unfortunately to no avail, Financial Aid passed me off to The scholarship dept. who passed me of to the college of arts and sciences who passed me off to the Biology dept. who said they can't do anything. They must have just had a meeting on how to blow someone off this morning, they did a fantastic job.</p>
<p>I think after that episode, i've come to the conclusion that this negotiating thing will never work, With any college. I got the feeling that they only want to talk to full pay parents.</p>
<p>It can work, but it depends: on the college, on whether it is merit or need based FA, on whether you have a more generous FA offer from a peer school (need based), and on how much they want the student (preferred packaging).</p>
<p>Well it certainly doesn’t work with University of Kentucky! We have more generous offers from all the other schools. They don’t even want to talk about it, when I say they don’t want to talk about it, I mean they acctually were quiet. Short answers! How childish is that.
Thats why I say they must have just had a meeting on how to brush off a parent. They executed it to perfection.</p>
<p>I’m not questioning your experience with UK. It’s not a school that I would consider a likely candidate for negotiation since it doesn’t have a huge per capita endowment or FA budget.</p>
<p>My comment was directed towards your remark that FA reviews don’t work with ANY college. There is a lot of variability between schools, and it is also much less likely that a school will match merit aid than need based FA. </p>
<p>I have had success with presenting more generous FA packages from peer schools, these were all private colleges with relatively large endowments.</p>
<p>This is one of those areas in which there’s an advantage to a smaller school that can take a more personal approach to individual student concerns. A major state flagship university can’t give personal consideration to all of its 20-30,000 students.</p>
<p>Some schools will discuss their financial aid awards and others will not. The schools that will not typically do not have deep pockets to dip into. Public universities do not guarantee to meet full need (with a couple of exceptions). Their primary obligation is to fund their INSTATE students. Need based aid is usually only what is federally funded and that is NOT enough to cover out of state costs. Need based aid at public universities seldom covers the difference in OOS/instate cost of attendance.</p>
<p>I wasn’t asking for the moon. All other schools gave at least 3000 more in merit aid and their tuition’s are lower. My son really wants to go to Kentucky, he applied back in july 2010. With Kentucky tuition about 3000 higher and recieving merit aid 3000 less, it makes it unlikely he will be able to attend.</p>
<p>It is not a matter of weather I thought they would or not. Thats where he wanted to go. he is a good kid and a good student with good grades. He gave me his effort, now I’m just giving him mine.</p>
<p>This is what I’ve noticed…Any GPAs above a 3.5 don’t really make a difference to many/most universities from a financial perspective. However, ACT/SAT scores can sometimes make a difference. </p>
<p>If I remember correctly, your son’s ACT is a 29…very good…into the top 10% of the nation. However, it only helps the school a little with raising its mid 50 range…which is why he got “some” merit , but not a lot. If he had had an ACT 33, the school may have “done the math” and realized that throwing your son some extra money each year would be a win/win…your son would enroll and that extra few bucks and his ACT 33 would have a more powerful effect on their stats. </p>
<p>Absolutely agree Mom2 - and great mathematical example by the way.</p>
<p>It may seem cold and overly numeric but consider their numbers (which on the flip side translate into a wealth of choices and options once you’re there) and the fact that the big schools are recalculating GPA’s from a multitude of sources and just don’t have the manpower to know how grades from English teacher X at School WPX compare to grades from teacher Y at School ZZQ - so test scores often take the lead in their merit system.</p>