<p>Do you think if a school of similar academic caliber to gave me a better financial aid offer that the school I wanted to attend would negotiate with me? Has anyone ever successfully done this?</p>
<p>Has it been done, yes. Does every one negotiate, no. It depends upon the school, for example: Wesleyan, Brown and Columbia tell prospective students up front that they don't negotiate because you should be attending their schools for the education not because of the amount of moneyand if money is the issue that you should attend where you can afford. </p>
<p>Some schools don't have the money to negotiate with, so you must take that into consideration. Sometimes the negotiation may be decreasing your out of pocket with more loan aid. </p>
<p>By the same token if you are someone that the school really wants to fill out it's class (whether it is for sports, diversity which can be geographic, ethnic or financial, a musician, artist , great writer or a rocket scientist) then yes.</p>
<p>However you negotiate, the school will want to see the other financial aid offer, if it is not a big difference in money then yes, you may get a better offer. You must also consider if your aid package will be consistent over the 4 years that you are at school. If there is a big gap in aid packages, the school may successfully negotiate to get you in the door,, but you may end up with that big gap in subsequent years.</p>
<p>In the end, my daughter top two choices, were between Williams and Dartmouth. Dartmouth was her first choice, but Williams offered a better aid package and she would have been more than happy to attend (even though the Williams package wasn't the best package she recieved out of all of her acceptances, if Dartmouth could meet the package it would give us some breathing room). However, Dartmouth said in their financial aid letter that you could ask for a review of your aid package even if it meant submitting an aid offer from another school.</p>
<p>My daughter wrote Dartmouth thanking them for their admission and their aid package, and Dartmouth was her first choice, however, the current package was really not affordable to our family (which was the truth) and asked for a review of her package to meet the Williams financial aid package which they did. We did not want to get into a bidding war between schools, so when Dartmouth met the Williams package, daughter accepted the package and now attends Dartmouth.</p>
<p>However keep in mind that Dartmouth, Amherst and Williams have some of the same students being accepted to each school, and Williams even acknowledged that after losing students to HYP, that there was a 50/50 split in the number of students turning down Williams for Dartmouth/Amherst. THe world of admissions and financial aid is pretty small with a lot of adcoms knowing one another.</p>
<p>do u no about cornell? i mean i just received my financial packet for cornell- which i got into ed, however, my family feels its not affordable. is cornell stingy with changing aid after it was already calculated</p>
<p>It is definitely possible to negotiate. Just tell them your situation. I was in a similar situation a couple years ago with a school and asked them to review the aid package. They did and the cost ended up being comparable to an in-state public...I ended up not attending that school, but I am just letting you know that it is definitely possible. If you can talk to the financial aid admins at the school and keep in contact with them by email, that would be great for you too.</p>
<p>Wow. That is really interesting. PM me and we'll talk. How does one obtain those records?</p>
<p>I work for Boston University's Office of Financial Assistance. If you wanted to go to BU, and you presented to us an award package from a comparable school, then it would be very ineffective because your tentative award letter is pretty much set in stone. In the office, assistant directors, people that award the financial aid, are scurrying to dish out funds to thousands of students. No one student is more important or less important than the rest, so to impose that a financial aid award should be better because some other school is able to provide more funds is quite facetious. So, all schools obviously do not give in to those type of negotiations. However, I have seen the package change when someone appeals or sends a letter describing extenuating circumstances that aren't covered on the FAFSA or CSS Profile. I am sure other schools that have certain surreptitious agendas that they need to carry out...be it meeting quotas and whatnot...are willing to re-issue packages based on another school's offering. So, it is worth the try to present another school's offer to a Financial Aid Office, but I wouldn't count on it so heavily.</p>
<p>Brandon, we know a student who successfully negotiated with BU (a few years ago) for an increase in aid based on the finaid package at another school (Syracuse). They had no extenuating circumstances....just a better finaid award from another school.</p>
<p>Well, that is interesting, and I am not sure how that would come about. The financial aid award packages are never changed because of another school's offering; that is one of the major things that they stress at the office. The student that you know of had to have some sort of issue that allowed for his/her package to be changed. If the package was issued with a new financial aid offer, then it had to be an increase in the amount of loan money the student could borrow. It isn't uncommon for the Office of Financial Assistance to increase a students budget to make them eligible for more loans from the government or loan agencies. If the student's financial aid package was increased with grant money or other funding that doesn't have to be repaid, then there is definitely something that could've been manipulated to allow for the funds to be issued. Now, I know that if you complain enough about your package, then if there is some remaining money that can be issued, then it will be issued. However, it wouldn't be by much. The bottom line is that no package will be changed because of another school's offering. Boston University simply doesn't care if you go to BU, Harvard, MIT or any other school on the planet, so negotiations of this sort are never taken into consideration....if everyone is going by the rules.</p>
<p>Sternie,</p>
<p>I don't think that you would have a lot of room for negotiation because not only have I heard that Cornell is a little tight on the dollars, but you have applied ED so you committed to attend regardless of the aid package (a caveat of ED). You would have no schools to use for negotiation because you would have to withdraw all of your other applications . If Cornell releases you from your ED commitment because you cannot afford it , you will most likely be resigned to attend your local public university. That is the main reason that people who need ot look at offers and may need to negotiate should not apply ED</p>
<p>If you appeal your financial aid package, can they take back some grants/scholarship or cut some money from it?</p>
<p>isnt it so that if the financial package doesnt meet ur ability to pay, u can get out of ed? and deadlines for other schools r mostly jan 1-15</p>
<p>Sternie,</p>
<p>It is not easy to get out of ED.</p>
<p>Please read the following link on ED, where student applied, realizes that they cannot afford it, it will give you the run down on the ED process</p>
<p>Liek,</p>
<p>Are you asking for some of the grant/scholarship money to be taken away? If you don't want a certain grant or scholarship, then you might not need to complete a formal appeal at all. You can just contact the financial aid office and tell them to cancel any grant or scholarship. They may request that you submit a letter or e-mail to have that request in writing. Appeals are usually a way to ask the financial aid office to take a second look at your financial aid to re-award you with increased funding.</p>
<p>no i'm asking like say you appeal to try to get a better financial aid package, can a school do the opposite and take away grants and scholarships for whatever reason, whether it be because they think you don't deserve it and they gave you too much or if they are offended etc.</p>
<p>I have not known of too many major increases due to negotiation and I lived near CMU for years and knew of many, many families who did negotiate with this college, that openly encourages negotiation. Most of the time, when negotiation is successful, in my experience, there has been some mistake or something not taken into account. In fact many guides to negotiating aid, recommend leaving a small item out so that the case can be reopened and reassessed in that light. There are a number of schools that just will not even discuss negotiation but all schools will reassess a situation where something was left out or not addressed.</p>
<p>IF you decision is to negotiate or not attend.....negotiate
but don't put a school through the hurdles if you are not going to go even if they do improve your aid....I think it would be dangerous to try to negotiate too much between competing schools. Watch out for schools who dramatically change aid packages after freshman year. some schools expect upperclass members to take more in loans.</p>
<p>We got a great package from another school in the midwest but my son really wanted to attend Cornell. He stayed during the Cornell Days and he just knew it was a fit for him. We figured in the end it would have been about the same due to the price of flying him and the family back and forth{family weekend, rent a car, hotels etc}We are on the east coast and Cornell is much closer. He is very happy. It was also nice to be able to compare packages which we were able to do applying regular decision. Some of the schools left big gaps in their packages and left us on our own to finance those gaps. I'm glad he did not apply early decision to those schools.</p>
<p>Liek,</p>
<p>I have never known of financial aid being taken away because you appealed. An appeal is supposed to help you. Your tentative financial aid award is comprised of everything that your EFC from the FAFSA (for federal funds) and CSS Profile (Private University funds) qualifies you to have. So, things shouldn't be taken away. I say "shouldn't" because who's to say that they won't find that they've made an error while analyzing your financial aid again? So, to make a long answer short, your financial aid shouldn't be taken away if you appeal.</p>
<p>NOOOOOOOO. I'm sorry, it's just that I guess I don't know how to communicate what I'm trying to ask effectively.</p>
<p>I'll try this one more time. </p>
<p>What I want to know is this, a student asks the school to appeal his financial aid for the purpose to get more grants and scholarships because he thinks that he needs more. Originally he got $15000 in grants/scholarship. When he appeals the school decides to take away that $15,000 and reduce it to $10,000, because the school believes they gave him to much in the first place, and that the student doesn't deserve $15,000.</p>
<p>Can this happen?</p>
<p>why would it?
I assume that the school wants the student to attend, otherwise they wouldn't have offered admission.
If the student has submitted information that indicates that they cannot afford the school, but that they really would like to, and that another comparable school is offering a more attractive package, that should be enough to get them to reconsider. However some schools gap, that means they don't offer to meet 100% of EFC. It may be a philisophical issue or maybe they are just cheap/broke, but you are not likely to have much luck negotiating with those schools.
But better to find out now, and adjust where you want to attend, than get enticed by a nice package for the 1st year and then hit with lots of loans for the consecutive years</p>