Our first child is going through final decision making and we are comparing financial aid at highly selectives. She also won several outside scholarships, some that are very valuable.
But we are running into an irony.
The schools have to a very large extent computed Parental Contributions off of FAFSA/CSS that are an extreme stretch for our family. She actually has enough aid between the schools and outside scholarships to cover everything in full BUT either the outside scholarships or the schools themselves reduce aid at the Parental Contribution as to effectively negate the benefit of outside scholarships.
Are there any hacks to help in this situation?
Or alternatively, what ways have people found to effectively negotiate with the schools in a formal appeals way to get help. My experience so far with formal appeals negotiation is that despite being quite scrupulous, thorough and even meeting their standards for renegotiation (ie outlying 2020 incomes for example) the schools seem to make no change.
Unfortunately, at most schools you can’t stack scholarships, so what you are experiencing is the norm.
If you have better FA at a peer school, you can try to negotiate for a match to that number, but I don’t think there are any “hacks” around stacking.
Do you have any affordable options on the list of acceptances?
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This. Some schools do allow stacking of outside scholarships with their awards, but most do not.
To answer your question…the school isn’t going to change their policy for just you.
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The universities that I think of as “highly selective” in most cases do not have any merit based aid. They only have need based financial aid. If you get outside scholarships, then your “need” is smaller by the size of the outside scholarship. This seems to be implicit in the definition of “need based” financial aid.
Unfortunately, there are a number of cases where the universities definition of “need” does not match the family’s definition of “need”. A couple of case that I have seen involve either a family which owns and operates a small business, or a family where one or both parents are already retired before the child starts university (this can happen when parents have children in their mid to late 40’s). In these cases in many cases the families just cannot afford to attend a highly ranked university in the US that offers only need based aid.
Lots of exceptional students attend in-state public universities. The hiring managers who I know are very aware of this. I have worked with a bunch of them after they graduate.
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This is NOT uniformly true. How the colleges reduce your need based aid (if they do)varies by college. You need to find out how your colleges deal with this. But yes…an outside scholarship reduces your financial need. So, in most cases this will reduce your need based aid award. Most colleges that reduce start with the self help portions…loans and work study. So really it’s not a bad thing to take less on loans, and perhaps not need to work.