Good point made above. Princeton does not use the Profile…it uses its own form.
Harvard uses the Profile.
Are you positive you enter the financial information correctly on your Profile for Harvard? That is the one that differed from the NPC. I would get that Profile,out…and look at it line by line…to see if there is an errror someplace.
Compare that info to the financial info you put on the Princeton form.
There might be a mistake on your Profile.
Princeton’s Financial Aid Form is basically the same as the standard CSS. I don’t know if Harvard asks for some of the supplemental questions/forms as my D didn’t apply there. I did do Harvard’s NPC when we were looking at schools and for us Princeton’s NPC was slightly better but Princeton’s NPC is pretty thorough and Harvard’s NPC is very simple with income ranges.
With Columbia they matched the EFC and pretty much said so in the email but maybe Harvard is different and will only crunch the numbers again.
Question – I know that these schools will reconsider their FA in light of their peers’ packages, but would they be willing to do so for another highly ranked 100% need-based private, even if it isn’t an Ivy? (Like Hopkins, for instance.)
I haven’t received packages from my Ivies yet and know that they have big endowments that should mean they are as generous or more, but my parents are comfortable with my Hopkins parental contribution, so the potential for them to reconsider would help me breathe easier.
@writergirl0316 If it’s a need-based award then I would check as maybe there is a discrepancy in the application as I wouldn’t think that JHU would offer more need-based aid than Harvard/Princeton.
Of course if you are going for Creative Writing then you might just want to go to JHU 
In which case, when you get your packages, please ask your question in a separate thread. Hijacking this one violates the rules. But the short answer is the policies vary by school. I think most Ivy League schools will limit it to other Ivy League schools, although Cornell says they will also match MIT, Duke, and Stanford.
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/12/cornell-matches-financial-aid-offered-peer-schools
As I said, it’s semantics, but HYP avoids the word “match.”
Thanks for all of the input.
HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO (I think this may be helpful for future viewers): Let’s say someone misentered something in the CSS. Can s/he fix that? If so, how?
Please don’t post hypotheticals!
If you made an error you need to contact the college to find out how to change it.
What sort of error did you make?
I did not make an error.
Is there a reason you wouldn’t accept Princeton’s offer? It is the most undergrad-focused of HYPSM (and the three C’s…) and one of our very best schools – maybe the best, along with the top LACs – for undergraduate education.
Sorry, what are the C’s and the LACs? Unfamiliar with the acronyms.
U of Chicago, Caltech, Columbia
And the LACs I had in mind include schools like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Pomona, Bowdoin. They and their ilk are known for near-100% undergrad focus due to the lack of grad students on campus, competing for top professors’ time and school resources.
LAC = liberal arts college
I reiterate that you should contact Harvard as soon as possible, and tell them of your Princeton offer (assuming you have settled on Harvard as your first choice).
If anybody is still following this thread, I thought I’d update it: Harvard matched with no problems.
Congratulations!
Congrats. It may be semantics, but Harvard probably won’t say they matched a peer school, but that they instead re-ran the numbers and corrected something. Did you get a commitment from them that, assuming your family situation remains the same, that your aid will be similar in future years?
Oof, I’m very late to reply (sorry, @3puppies). I did get that commitment. They said they made an error in how they incorporated the values of my parents’ retirement account(s) into their calculations.