Do colleges negotiate on the cost of attendance to keep a student from going elsewhere, once admitted?
Say UofM vs UCLA vs MIT vs Princeton.
Can one offer be used to negotiate a better package elsewhere?
Any suggestions on how to approach this with colleges?
I made an appointment with the FA person on Accepted Students day and asked for more aid. The woman told me about a music scholarship for non-music majors who wished to continue performing in college. It wasn’t a lot, but it helped. When I explained that we had had several rough years in our business and family, she had me fill out a form and write a letter explaining our circumstances. They gave us several more thousand dollars a year due to that.
Our financial advisor (Ameriprise) told us he went back several times with each of his two kids and they gave him more money each time. So it’s definitely worth a try. He said he did mention packages from other schools, but I didn’t.
If you are out of state for UCLA, forget it. There is no financial aid for OOS students at all.
Some schools will respond to a request to appeal your FA, and you can mention if the cost of attendance is lower at a comparable school. They may ask to see the other offer. Ideally it is helpful if you also have some additional info about your finances that can help them find a reason within their normal FA rules to give more aid. Directly asking them to match another school’s offer doesn’t usually go well. Using the word “negotiate” probably isn’t helpful, either. Some schools will adjust upon appeal if they can find a reason to, some won’t.
You don’t have that much leverage. All those schools have long waitlists.
Princeton will consider offers from other peer schools (they get to determine which schools are peers). Public schools aren’t able to match most other offers because of the way FA is granted. Make sure you are comparing apples and apples. Is it merit aid? Is it need based?
State schools and elite schools don’t necessarily need to match offers to fill their classes. However, if you are looking at a private school that accepts 75% or more of applicants, those places are worried about filling seats and may offer more merit aid just for asking.
For any school, if you have legitimate grounds for a need-based appeal, such as job loss, medical expenses, or family circumstances that are hard to explain on the fafsa you can do an appeal on that basis.
My feeling is that it is always worth a shot…just be ready to say “if we get to X then he/she will commit today”. We tried last year and were successful at one school and painfully unsuccessful at another school. In the end, my son chose a third school that was our least expensive and most academically rigorous option of all.
Yes, not Top 50 liberal arts college, but private one consistently in Top 100 list, with satisfactory 4-year merit scholarship, post receipt of ED decision.
At our urging, both kids expressed their disappointment with merit aid (we don’t qualify for need based FA) at different highly ranked privates. I can’t remember the exact wording, but something like, “UofYou is my top choice, but I’m struggling with the better merit aid from UofThem.” Helped that UofThem were peer schools in the same areas and compete for similar students.
Interestingly, both received additional “special” renewable merit scholarships of $5K+ before decision day. As mentioned above, it’s worth a shot.
If your financial situation is not accurately reflected in the Profile and on the FAFSA, Michigan may take an extenuating circumstance under advisement. Typically only the most needy of out of state students receive financial aid at UofM although they are in a major fundraising effort some of which is earmarked for scholarships. UofM does not typically participate in tuition discounting to attract students.
I was able to “negotiate” an extra 10k per year of merit money at a top 40 school. I did have to send them the merit offer from a peer school.
But then your son committed to a different school? That sounds… questionable. We were able to get $10K of additional need based aid from one of D2’s schools via an appeal, and they did ask for a comparable (actually higher ranked) school’s offer when we mentioned it. But one of her schools didn’t budge an inch – they were kind of snotty about the request. (I was happy when she didn’t pick them, honestly)
The advice given by the above posters has been spot on: public universities (esp. if you are OOS), with either not give financial aid or not “match” other aid offers, so you can forget trying to re-negotiate aid packages with UMich or UCLA.
Private schools, such as Princeton or MIT, might indeed “match” offers by “peer” institutions (BTW, never ask a FA to “match” an offer – they prefer you to say that you’d like them to “reconsider your offer in light of a competitor’s offer”). Yale flat out told us that U.Chicago wasn’t a “peer institution” and told us that they would consider offers only from Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. Also, schools will take COA/expected parent contribution into consideration when considering other awards.
Haha – I find it funny that Yale would say that (since they are now tied with UChicago at #3 in the US News rankings). UChicago has been gunning for Yale in the rankings for several years, and Yale likes to pretend UChicago doesn’t exist and isn’t gaining on them. Anyway, that gave me a chuckle – carry on.
^^ I chuckled too. @LoveTheBard, I dare you to post that story on U Chicago page. The ensuing debate would probably keep the regulars occupied for the remainder of 2017.
The issue of peer schools is NOT whether the school is an academic peer. The issue is what do the stats say about cross admits. If school A has a decades worth of data showing that they only lose 5 or 7% of cross admits to the other school, why would they up the package???
The implication from a lot of these posts is that this a touchy-feely process which is absolutely not the case. Every college maintains a host of statistics and uses various algorithms on enrollment management.
I don’t think that it would be a matter of Yale matching an offer from UChicago, but UChicago, matching a need based financial aid package from Yale (since Yale has one of the best financial aid policies in the country)
Also remember a school that only gives need based aid does not care what another school has given you in merit money. It is need based to need based. Even then you would be asking for a financial review (never negotiation). you can submit an offer from a peer school to see how the 2 schools are looking at the same financial information.
For need-based aid from a school that says it meets full need, you can make the argument that they haven’t met full need–if that is true. My D appealed to USC on the basis that the parental contribution was unrealistically high, and they increased the offer. I think you may need to have some realistic numbers to back you up, and not just “We bought a boat this year and don’t have much money left.”
It is the school, not the family who determines the need. Yes, the parents can ask for a financial review and the package can be changed especially if there is a situation; job loss, unreimbursed medical expenses, , care for elderly parents (and you have the documentation ) etc.