<p>I would stick with a letter. It allows you to make sure you are saying exactly what you want to say. Plus, most FAO's expect appeals to be made in this fashion.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your help.</p>
<p>scottaa, We tried this with a letter. So far there has been no response. It was faxed and mailed.</p>
<p>Give them a call. But keep in mind, there are some schools out there that have a "take it or leave it" attitude. Negotiating appeals doesn't always get you more. Thus the critical importance of having options.</p>
<p>We thankfully have options. Two schools that we sent letters to, never even replied. Is this common?</p>
<p>Here in our backyard, we have two very good, private colleges. Both of them are great schools to send your kids to. One of them always responds to our appeals, and the FAO is a dream to work with. The other doesn't give you the time of day, no matter what you send them.</p>
<p>scottaa, thanks.</p>
<p>I'm copying below a response given last year to the same issues. Look for a thread titled "Scholarship Negotiation" with the last post in April of 05. There's a lot of extra information here. Sorry, I do not know how to provide the direct link.</p>
<p>Yes, you can definitely "negotiate" (at some schools). By the time a decision had to be made, my oldest had 3 or 4 top choices. There was no one perfect college for him, and finances played a big part of the decision. His offers were for merit aid, and varied across the board from full tuition to nothing. We wrote and explained that although he truly liked their school, we could not justify the difference in costs. While they were not all of totally equal caliber, they were within the same ball park. We weren't comparing Harvard w/ local state for example.</p>
<p>Here's the range of responses we received:</p>
<p>School A sent back a form they have for exactly this purpose (comparing other offers). School B sent a letter offering an additional $8000 "merit" scholarship ( a school which states they do not give merit scholarhips). Realize some schools package their need based aid as merit aid, because they feel that students are more honored to receive the merit package. School C sent a rather terse reply implying my son should be honored with what he already received from them. He was actually leaning toward school C until this reply, which partially turned us all off . They could have handled it in a much nicer way in our opinion, simply by suggesting he apply for outside scholarships, or offering their national merit aid (which was stated in the catalogue, but not discussed in his personal aid offer). School D never even answered, but they originally offered nothing, and their tuition was very high, so it was an easy choice to let go.</p>
<p>kj, Thanks for posting this. I remember this post now. Anyway, so far we have not received a response at two schools.</p>
<p>Is this the thread you were referring to? I also don't know how to link a thread but if you copy/paste it hopefully will work</p>
<p>palermo, Thank you. I was looking for this thread and did not see it. It is very useful reading.</p>