Has anyone had any success negotiating a merit aid offer? I understand that sometimes colleges will up their offer if presented with a higher offer from a comparable school. My son was offered $15K from Syracuse and $18K from UVM. Do you think he has a shot of getting a few thousand more? He did get a pretty generous Financial Aid package from Syracuse but the school is so expensive that it ends up being almost $10K more than UVM. My older son went to UVM and their award was also more than comparable schools he got into (UMass and Delaware) but we never appealed because he preferred UVM anyway. Not sure if UVM is considered on par with Syracuse.
Can you tell me how you received the financial aid package? We got the acceptance letter with $10K scholarship but nothing else yet and Fin Aid 2023 link is not allowing us to click it. My daughter has received $29K (in total) from UVM. Just waiting on the rest from Syracuse so that she can make a decision.
It’s possible, but Syracuse is pretty tight with merit aid and they are probably a tad more highly regarded than UVM. Typically this strategy works best when a better merit offer comes from a much more highly ranked school than the school you’re trying to get more money from.
Just email the admissions office with what you’ve said here. Merit awards are given by admissions, not the FA office. Good luck.
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I went into his portal this morning. At first I thought that the amounts were just blank but then I noticed there were tabs at the top to click on. I clicked on the tab that said “aid offer” and it was there. This was only visible when viewing on a desktop computer by the way.
He still has a few schools to hear from, so we will wait and see what comes.
to confirm, you went to MySlice, clicked on the Fin Aid tab and were able to click on 2023? That’s were it stops for us, 2023 is not a link, yet.
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Right. And then there were tabs on the offer letter page.
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My child went through this last year although via music school admissions, but I think the same principle applies. They are at Oberlin and negotiated their merit scholarship against a much better package from a low profile state school that recruited them aggressively.Oberlin was their first choice but we told Oberlin about the other offer and they increased the scholarship by a few thousand dollars. Can’t hurt at all to try.
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Same here…Dean’s scholarship but nothing shows up in financial page and cannot click, link does not work?
Possibly yours is not ready yet. My son’s was not clickable initially. Also, as i mentioned it only worked on the computer, not on my phone, even when viewing "desktop site* in Chrome.
same for us
I did for my son who is currently a sophomore. It was surprisingly easy.
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Thanks - I assume that this was in response to my original post and not to the person you replied to. If so, may I ask what the original award was and how much you got it up to? Also, I noticed that my son got the $10K Dean’s Scholarship plus another $5K scholarship called the SUccess award. I wonder if the SUccess award is not renewable? If not, that is also a concern. Actually editing this to say I looked it up and it is renewable.
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Sorry I didn’t negotiate merit just fa. I just emailed a letter asking for more. I can’t remember how much more they gave my son. I want to say 5k more a year or may it was 7k.
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Who did you address the letter to? Thanks.
I uploaded a general letter not necessarily addressed to anybody. I uploaded it on myslice in the financial aid section.
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UPDATE: Thank you to everyone for your advice. I went ahead and emailed both Financial Aid and Admissions . Actually I originally emailed the Director of Undergraduate Recruitment, but he said that he had nothing to do with this and was only responsible for the highest merit scholarships which my son had not been offered. He suggested I reach out to both Admissions and Financial Aid, so I just sent an email to their general mailboxes. I decided NOT to have my son do it because, frankly he refuses to even dispute a parking ticket and I knew he wouldn’t want to do it and would probably be annoyed at me for even asking. Well, they awarded him an additional $2,500 a year scholarship called the SU Orange Distinction Award, making his total Merit award $17,500, just $500 less than UVM, so certainly comparable. UVM total cost is still less, but this extra bit helps. So glad I asked! My son has still not decided on where to attend, but if he does choose SU it won’t be as financially painful.
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That’s amazing! Well done!
Who got back to you? Admissions or FA? And how long did it take?
It was someone from Financial Aid. I originally emailed March 28th and they just got back to me today and apologized for the delay in responding (it had only been 8 days) however it appears that the award was adjusted some time earlier, but I had not checked the portal.
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