<p>Hi, I got accepted into my top college and their tuition is $36,000. I got a $4000 scholarship with a $5500 loan. Which leaves me with $26500 a year. How do I ask my top school for a few more thousand dollars? I really love this school and another college that I'm not interested in is giving me a scholarship of $12500 for only two years.</p>
<p>You can ask them to please review your financial aid to see if any additional aid is possible. If you have any information that wasn’t provided in the FAFSA (large family medical bills? other relatives supported by your family? job loss of parent? etc.), be sure you include that in your request. It is hard for them to adjust without some reason to change their calculations.</p>
<p>You can tell them that another college has made the cost of attendance less than theirs, but the other college has to be comparable in ranking for this to have any chance of influencing them. And some colleges won’t be influenced anyway… If the bigger scholarship is from a less prestigious college, it probably won’t do you any good to mention it.</p>
<p>But it may be that if you want to attend this college, you and your family will have to pay more. That is the reality for many students.</p>
<p>Have you heard from all your schools yet? If you have others where the acceptances and aid haven’t been received yet, and the schools ARE comparable to your top college, you could hold off until you know what they are offering, then include that in your request for review.</p>
<p>We were pretty careful to not ask colleges to “match” other colleges – we asked them to “review”, “provided additional information”, and said that “college X had made the cost of attendance $X cheaper” and that it would be hard to turn that down, although their college was kid’s top choice. We were VERY polite in our requests, since we were asking for more money – do NOT be demanding, it will not do any good and will likely hurt your chances.</p>
<p>Should I state what school is giving me more money and how much? </p>
<p>We actually took copies of the offer from the other schools. Your top college IS going to want to know what college and how much. </p>
<p>Remember, some schools have much larger endowments and more generous fincnail aid policies. If the other college is very similar…a peer school, you could see a review. If the second college is not a peer school, it might not matter at all to the top school.</p>
<p>these two schools are located in different states but they are both private-catholic and medium size.</p>
<p>We told them in our initial request, which I sent via email, that College X had made cost of attendance $X cheaper and it was hard to turn them down. I didn’t send the actual letter with that other offer with my initial request, but had it scanned and ready to send if they requested it – which they did. </p>
<p>Even when it is a peer school, some won’t review, but it is worth a try.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to three Catholic colleges…University of San Diego, and Santa Clara University…which are peer institutions drawing many of the same applicants. She also applied to Salve Regina, a much less competitive catholic college. Salve gave her a HUGE scholarship. She received a HUGE scholarship to University of South Carolina as well.</p>
<p>Her first choice was Santa Clara. They didn’t give two hoots about offer from Salve or U of South Carolina, but they looked at the offer for USD.</p>
<p>USD on the other hand, REFUSED to review the financial aid offer they gave DD. PERIOD.</p>
<p>I have to say I agree with USD’s approach. Why should they bid for students, trying to steal the ‘best’ students only when another school shows interest? If the school has admitted the best students, and given a fair offer compared to the offers given to the other applicants, why should they care that Student A received more from school B? If student A deserves more, then the school should offer more and maybe after all the offers have been accepted and rejected, the school might have more money to offer, but I don’t like the fact that the school held back money to bid higher for a student that another school might want.</p>
<p>Now I do think the student should compare offers, and I do think the student should ask a school for more money if he needs it to go to that school, I just don’t think the school should condition that money on whether another school wants that student and starts a bidding war.</p>
<p>I agree that it’s worthwhile to explain that Top U is the top choice of your student (if it is) but Peer U (which you name) has given $$$$ more in merit aid, reducing annual cost of attendance to $$$$$/year, as well as other items for Top U’s review. Only do this if you are certain you WILL accept Top U if they match or exceed the offer. We were able to get an additional $2500/year for 4 years or $10k total by the review and producing the offer from Peer U (which S really didn’t warn to attend). </p>
<p>THANK YOU EVERYONE THIS HELPED ALOT.</p>
<p>How do you approach a school whose tuition is much higher than a peer university and whose offer was lower by about 2K per year? Does it even matter? My S wants the more expensive school so I need to see if they will reconsider but does actual tuition cost really matter? Do I approach it when I ask for the review that school A is covering about 40% of tuition while school B is only offering 20%. I can’t really go with school A has made the cost of attendance less than theirs because it was already about 10K less per year to begin with…</p>
<p>Bucky…if your less expensive school is a public university (and NOT UNC-CH, UVA or UMich), and your MORE exoensive school is a private university or OOS public, the school might not consider this at all.</p>
<p>Most colleges will only reconsider aid when comparing offers for PEER schools. It does NOT sound like you two colleges are peer schools. Are you sure these are PEER schools?</p>