<p>My child has received a fairly significant merit award from one school(20K/yr) along with a financial aid grant(4K/yr). I am wondering whether it would be worth it to try to bring this up when discussing the financial aid offer from another school which did not offer my child a merit award. Not for the purpose of getting him a merit award but rather to see if they would be willing to offer him more financial aid. Any thoughts?<br>
[From what I understand colleges bristle at the idea of negotiating financial aid but that sometimes they will review circumstances and possibly change the aid offered.]</p>
<p>"[From what I understand colleges bristle at the idea of negotiating financial aid but that sometimes they will review circumstances and possibly change the aid offered.] "</p>
<p>OP, Last year I was able to have adjustments made to grant offers. The key was whether the institution in question sees itself as a FA peer of the institution whose numbers you are presenting as an alternative. As an example, WashU considers itself a FA peer of Duke and Vanderbilt, but not Harvard or a State U. Using “Merit Aid” in the comparison, however, might be considered “apples to oranges”.</p>
<p>Are your child’s scores in the top quarter of the class at the other school? (If they don’t publish the stats you may be able to find them by googling “common data set” along with the school’s name. Common data set info covers all aspects of the school, including admissions info.)</p>
<p>If the scores are high, I would ask – the worst they can do is say no. But I wouldn’t expect a huge change in the package. My kid got bumped up a bit when he asked last year, ($1000 plus a free laptop). He had to fax them the offer by the competing school.</p>
<p>Also, you probably shouldn’t phrase it as “negotiating”. DS called to the school himself and told them he was thinking about going to the competing school because he would have had a full ride there.</p>
<p>Schools try hard to remain attractive to top candidates and don’t want to be seen as offering less financial aid or merit money than their peers, as far as the budget allows. Asking if an offer can be matched is quite reasonable. FA will tend to be more in agreement (re FAFSA and Profile) than will merit, across schools; trying to get, e.g., $20K more in aid from a school that doesn’t give merit probably won’t work.</p>
<p>Are all the ivys considered FA peers?</p>
<p>@bibulous, I don’t think so. HPY are in a class of their own.</p>
<p>@vossron, last year, WashU increased their grant portion of my FA package $9K in order to match Duke.</p>
<p>“WashU increased their grant portion of my FA package $9K in order to match Duke”</p>
<p>Did you perhaps give them additonal family financial data (a common cause of an increase), or did they increase it simply to match (good for you if they did!)?</p>
<p>^^ It was their idea. I simply informed them that I was still considering WashU, but that their FA package was inferior to others. He asked what others, and when I mentioned Duke, he said “we’ll match Duke’s offer”. He then asked me to fax the Duke FA package to him to make it official. In the end I turned them both down to accept a COA deal :)</p>
<p>WU gives merit awards; did they say if they were offering merit money or financial aid? I know it sometimes feels the same to recipients. I still wouldn’t expect that much increase from a school that doesn’t give merit money.</p>
<p>IIRC, WUSTL is also known for preferential packaging of need-based aid, where straight negotiation does make a difference.</p>
<p>I reread some of your earlier posts. You have a IM family contribution of about $35k.</p>
<p>You have a son who’s being recruited for a sport and OSU and Miami-Oxford are the safeties. Did one of those schools offer the $20k merit? </p>
<p>Are you wondering if a higher ranked school will match what a safety school has offered? If so, then the answer is not likely unless they really, really want your child.</p>
<p>For a school that gives merit money, “preferential packaging” sure sounds like merit money! :)</p>
<p>But, schools that don’t give merit money will sometimes preferentially convert loans to grants.</p>
<p>^Yep, it’s pretty much merit money, except that they won’t necessarily call it “merit” and it does include some determination of need–if you don’t have any need at all, preferential packaging won’t help much.</p>
<p>Had the same experience with WashU; they made a very significant adjustment to their FA package based on a package received from another school. Not merit. And WashU does allow stacking of outside merit aid on top of FA, so if you can get them to match a better FA offer and then bring in some outside merit it can be a really good deal.</p>
<p>to Mom2collegekids - This does not involve the safety schools. The two schools in question are quite similar - size, location and reputation. Possibly the one I want to approach for more $ is a slightly better school (a little harder to get into). The question is whether bringing up the “merit” money the first school has offered will be of any value in obtaining a different offer from the second school. Thanks for your reply.</p>
<p>dadplus2 –</p>
<p>IMO, it’s definitely worth a shot to ask for additional money. The only downside is that they might say no. My son sent a letter to his first choice school and included copies of scholarship offers from two other slightly lower rated schools. They only bumped their offer up a little, but $1500 extra/year was definitely worth the couple of hours he and I spent on the letter.</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>Who do you send the letter to? Is it better to send the letter to the financial aid department or the head of the school/department your child was admitted to?</p>
<p>To the financial aid office. They’re used to such requests.</p>
<p>We have not received the financial aid package from the school yet but I am not expecting any scholarship/grant money. Is it best to contact the financial aid office now or should I wait until after I receive the package?</p>
<p>*We have not received the financial aid package from the school yet but I am not expecting any scholarship/grant money. Is it best to contact the financial aid office now or should I wait until after I receive the package? *</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>If you don’t expect to get any scholarship or grant money, on what grounds would you ask for more money? What is your EFC?</p>
<p>*should I wait until after I receive the package? *</p>
<p>If you already know that it won’t contain any scholarships or grants, that means it will likely just have a 5500 student loan in it. So, why wait?</p>
<p>What school is this? Is it an OOS public?</p>