If Penn matched my Harvard FinAid offer, will they screw me over my sophomore year?

Paying for College
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<p>Even though my family's adjusted income is less than 140k, our EFC is really high so the only college to offer me financial aid was Harvard (I was accepted into quite a few other ivy league schools...).</p>

<p>I have narrowed down my college choices to Harvard, Princeton, Wharton Fisher M&T program, or Columbia (where I am a Davis Scholar for SEAS). If these other colleges matched Harvard's finaid offer for my freshman year, is it possible they will reduce my finaid to 0 for my sophomore year once they "locked me in"?</p>

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<p>I want to know this too. Would colleges ever entice students to enroll at their school by giving them a full ride their first year and then gap them or make them take out a lot of loans their subsequent years?</p>

<p>Also what is the consolidated list of colleges that meets full demonstrated need? Here is what I found so far:</p>

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<p>[Need-blind</a> admission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Need-blind admission - Wikipedia”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Is there a way to separate the 3rd list into two different separate lists (schools that meets need without the use of loans and schools that meets need with the use of loans)?</p>

<p>EDIT: Never mind. I think I found my answer. [Project</a> on Student Debt: Summary of Pledges: Eligibilty Guidelines and Basic Provisions](<a href=“http://projectonstudentdebt.org/Type_and_Coverage.vp.html]Project”>http://projectonstudentdebt.org/Type_and_Coverage.vp.html)</p>

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<p>[Project</a> on Student Debt: What’s the Bottom Line?](<a href=“http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php]Project”>http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php)</p>

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<p>This is a valid question. The answer is that most every school I know does NOT do this as a practice. But what makes this question so valid is that it CAN happen in certain scenarios as the OP illustrates.</p>

<p>Let’s say a student is accepted to H with a $30K financial aid award due to H’s very generous formula. If that student is also accepted to , say UPenn Wharton, but come up a big zero for fin aid there, and if the student shows Penn fin aid office H’s award and Penn decides to match it, what happens in subsequent years?</p>

<p>In my opinion, Penn or any other school should not match a financial aid award unless they can show a definite change in an item in the fin aid information that supports the aid given. And if that is not a recurring situation, the student needs to be aware that the formulas are definitely different between schools, and a second year computing might come up with a huge discrepancy. If this issue is not discussed and resolved, it can be a problem.</p>

<p>I wonder how CMU deals with this issue, since they will try to match offers. There is nothing to match in subsequent years and fin aid is not guaranteed since it changes with changes in financial information that the family submits.</p>

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<p>I’m curious about the answer to this too. I got one school to match another’s school offer and didn’t even think about what might happen next year. Oops. Anecdotes anyone?</p>

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<p>Does ANYONE match Harvard? When I was “negotiating” last spring, ALL the schools mentioned that they would NOT consider an offer from Harvard.</p>

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<p>I imagine Yale, Princeton and Stanford would, as the discrepancy would be small in the first place and they’re competing for cross admits. Which schools told you they wouldn’t consider a Harvard offer?</p>