<p>For top schools that do not award merit aid, how much might they adjust their financial aid offer either because the student is very competitive in the applicant pool, or because the student gets an offer from a "better" school? For some schools we are interested in, the amount it says we'd have to pay is $35K, which is too much. Could it drop to $30K or $25K?</p>
<p>If they do NOT give merit aid at all, the strength of the applicant in the applicant pool won’t matter at all. If the school only gives need based aid, they will ONLY care about your financial need, and what they compute you can pay.</p>
<p>Are you saying you got a merit award from a “better school” and you are hoping a top school will give you need based aid to match that merit award?</p>
<p>This hasn’t actually happened yet since my S is not a senior, but I was kind of hoping that might happen, yes.</p>
<p>You can’t count on being able to get colleges to meet another college’s offer at all. We have tried it 3 times, and got something out of it once. So don’t go into this thinking it is going to happen that way for you. A few thoughts on how to do it if you end up wanting to try. Assume College A is where your kid wants to attend, and College B gave an offer that has a lower cost of attendance.
- If College B is comparable to or a higher ranked college than College A, your odds are better of having success.
- Don’t ask college A to “match” college B’s offer. Tell them about College B and the lower cost of attendance, and say your kid would really like to attend A, but the financial offer from B is hard to turn down. As for a “review” of your FA package. College A may ask to see the award letter from B.
- Colleges are more likely to improve your aid if you have some additional information to give them about your finances that didn’t really come out in the original FA paperwork. They use a calculation to provide aid, and if you don’t give them something that moves that calculation, many will not move just because you have better offer. So if you have some additional evidence of medical expenses, providing support for other family members, downturn in small business with financials to prove it, etc., it helps.<br>
- The time it worked for us, part of the package from college B was a small merit award. College A still matched it with need based aid (and kid attended College A).<br>
- Just because College A improves their offer for freshman year does not mean it will carry on into future years. Financial aid is calculated anew each year.
- Top schools know every student they accept will not attend. So don’t think you have a lot of room to negotiate, you really probably don’t… for every kid who turns them down due to FA, there is likely one in the wings who will pay what is asked. Bottom line is that they are a business, and have to keep an eye on their financial bottom line just like you do.</p>
<p>Colleges that give onlly need based and no merit aid are usually highly competitive schools. They will not likely give you a need based award that matches a merit award at another school.</p>
<p>Ant to be honest, what competitive school would be a stronger school than those that guarantee to meet full need?? </p>
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<p>this doesn’t seem to make much sense. what “better schools” give merit and are 'better" than top schools that do not?</p>
<p>Please provide specific examples naming schools.</p>
<p>As for the few top schools that give some targeted merit (washu, rice, vandy, etc), they arent better than the ivies that dont. </p>
<p>No one, even with tippy top scores, should expect merit from washu, rice, vandy, etc, because they have so many tippy top applicants with perfect/near-perfect stats that they target their awards to get students that help their URM diversity and regional diversity (if you are an amazing applicant with perfect stats from Alaska or North Dakota or a top-stats AA male, then you are a more likely merit award recipient). If you are a top stats white/Asian male from calif or the NE, not likely at all because you are a dime a dozen. If you have an amazing achievement, olympic medal winner, published best seller, etc, and the top merit school know that HYPS will likely accept, then a merit award may be offered to poach you away.</p>
<p>It is interesting to read the H14 entry in common data set where colleges check off what things they consider in awarding need-based and non-need-based aid. If they check it, you can be sure it is considered, but if they don’t, well I’m suspicious. For example, Vandy and Johns Hopkins check state of residence, but not minority status for merit aid. I’m pretty sure Vandy, at least, considers minority status. Wash U claims to not consider state or minority for merit. Duke and Rice check both. </p>
<p>Even more interesting is that I just noticed some colleges check boxes for need-based aid. I thought FA was only based on need, but Vanderbilt considers all the same things as for merit and Wash U, Johns Hopkins and Rice consider academics for need-based.</p>
<p>As intparent says, this playing off awards at one school to increase package at another only can work if the school you want more money from is at the same level, or preferably lower level than the one that gave you the best package. This year I know of one family where the student wants to attend an OOS state school on large merit, but the basic FA package received from a top 20 school was a better deal. They were able to get the state school to increase the merit, meeting about half the difference in residual COA.The reverse would NOT have worked. </p>
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<p>In the one case where it worked for us, we were playing top schools against each other. A top 5 university that had given merit aid and a small amount of need based aid, and a top 15 LAC that had initially given nothing. The LAC matched the COA of the university with a need-based grant. The LAC does give merit awards, but it had given nothing to my kid and continues to give nothing merit based (except the guaranteed NMF award, which both colleges had).</p>
<p>But the top 5 university against a top 3 LAC netted nothing. And our other attempt was with 2 LACs both ranked in the 40s, again netted nothing.</p>
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It is all semantics as this is a recent change at Wash U as the 2 scholarships did mention being AA/Hispanic for these 2 scholarships</p>
<p>The school targets high achieving AA for the John B Ervin Scholarship
and high achieving hispanics for the Annika Rodgriguez Scholarship
Now for both scholarships they state</p>
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<p><a href=“http://admissions.wustl.edu/scholarships-financial-aid/Freshman-Academic-Scholarship-Fellowship-Programs/Pages/John-B-Ervin-Scholars-Program.aspx”>http://admissions.wustl.edu/scholarships-financial-aid/Freshman-Academic-Scholarship-Fellowship-Programs/Pages/John-B-Ervin-Scholars-Program.aspx</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://admissions.wustl.edu/scholarships-financial-aid/Freshman-Academic-Scholarship-Fellowship-Programs/Pages/Annika-Rodriguez-Scholars-Program.aspx”>http://admissions.wustl.edu/scholarships-financial-aid/Freshman-Academic-Scholarship-Fellowship-Programs/Pages/Annika-Rodriguez-Scholars-Program.aspx</a></p>
<p><<<<
I’m pretty sure Vandy, at least, considers minority status.
<<<</p>
<p>that is very true.</p>
<p>i dont care what WashU is claiming…Ive seen too many examples to think that home-state and URM status dont matter.</p>
<p>Having special scholarships that specifically target particular groups is one thing. What we found so disheartening was that we did not understand this about the scholarships that are for everyone. Vandy’s website descriptions of how scholarship recipients are chosen makes no mention of minority status or geography. Maybe that is just assumed by all, something everyone should just know. But we didn’t. So when the results came out and it was clear that the money is disproportionately being awarded to top minority students to woo them, it was a shock. Now I know better. Scholarship apps, and apps in general, and the visiting process is time consuming and not free. People need to be able to evaluate their chances somewhat to decide if they want to engage in the first place. I understand that is a great way for colleges to use their resources to build the classes they want. I do wish they were more transparent about it. I see it now on the CDS, but I didn’t know then to look for things like that there. Not that I think D would have necessarily won some prestigious award, likely not, but her chances going in were about half of what we had estimated. Maybe half of epsilon isn’t much different than epsilon. But still…</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies. For example, in our case Harvard, Yale, and Vandy come out much less on the calculator ($17K-$24K) than other schools are are interested in like Chicago and Georgetown ($35K-$37K). Would either lower their price against Harvard? (Yes, I know these acceptances are assuming a lot.)</p>
<p>An alternative way to lower the price is try to get outside scholarship. Many schools (i think) will let you keep up to the amount of your loan plus your student contribution. After that, the scholarship decreases your need dollar-for dollar. Anyway, doing this could decrease the price by $5K or maybe more. NOW the problem is trying to get that much in outside scholarships!</p>
<p>Um… now the problem is trying to get those admissions to start with. The number of students who could wrangle those admissions (or a subset of them) is very small. I think you are putting the cart before the horse unless your kid has a hook of some kind. Run net price calculators and apply to colleges you CAN afford. Then if you can negotiate the price down a bit, that is gravy. But don’t count on it as a strategy.</p>
<p>Harvard has a HUGE endowment and extremely generous need based aid awarding policies…awarding need based aid to families with incomes up to $180,000 a year, I believe.</p>
<p>Unless a school is similarly endowed, with similar policies in terms of awarding need based aid, it is highly unlikely they will match a Harvard need based aid offer. </p>
<p>In fact, convention advice is NOT to compare the need based financial aid at HYPS against any other schools, as these are extremely generous schools.</p>
<p>Merit money is not necessarily for “merit” defined as academic excellence, though, yes, that is something that can be rewarded financially at some schools. I’ve see it several times, where geographics, URM status, undersubscribed majors, gender, unusual background, and sometimes thing on a particular school’s wish list that no one knows about gets preference. URM at one school, does not so mean at another. There are schools where Asians are URMs, and others where they are not, for example. It’s a well known fact that some excellent schools that have a heavy local draw make it much more difficult for those from that state or 1-3 hours away to gain entry. So while there is some element of luck in finding a school that is also seeking someone with a profile like your student, you can get some idea that your kid’s app will be in a huge stack with other’s just like him. The kid from Alaska will stand out in that stack. If there 20 kids from his school and hundreds, maybe even thousands within a couple hours from your school all applying to certain school, well…you might not be able to pick out your own kid’s app when specific name data is removed. A lot of the apps do look the same.</p>
<p>As others have said, I would not count on appeals on aid to pan out, or if they do, it’s often a small amount. But one certainly should try. The admissions folks are funny about words like “negotiate” and like to think that they are above that, so you need to reword requests accordingly. </p>
<p>I don’t know if there is a list somewhere, but some schools have specific policies to match competitors. I ran across such a policy for Cornell. They will match the other Ivy schools, Duke, MiT and Stanford.</p>
<p>^^^ That has nothing to do with merit, though, that’s just matching another school’s need-based assessment. </p>
<p>Cornell did say at their ASD that they have a standard computation, but then some students get given better aid, and if they get it the first year, they’ll get it all 4 years. They didn’t say what their criteria were, and they said they would not confirm or deny whether your student fell into that category. I would assume they use it more for diversity than for plain stats-based merit, but I really have no basis for that other than a guess. </p>
<p>The only criteria Cornell checks on CDS as criteria for awarding need-based aid is ‘leadership.’
<a href=“http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000554.pdf”>http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000554.pdf</a> item H14</p>