From what I have seen on College confidential over the years, there seem to be three basic financial aid ‘negotiation’ paths
Parents presenting substantially different packages offered from well resourced, peer schools and the preferred school matching the offer (Package A from Yale is $10k less expensive than Package B from Princeton - Princeton matches Yale’s package when presented with it).
This only seems to work at the most highly rated schools and only with a very select few ‘peer’ college offers; if someone came to Princeton with an offer from a ‘non-peer’ school (like for example - Johns Hopkins), Princeton shrugs and says their offer is their offer, take it or leave it. The schools has to agree with the parent of whether or not a competing offering is from a peer school, if they don’t consider the better offer to be from a peer school (especially if the better offer is merit based and being presented to a needs based only school) they don’t go any further with trying to match and better their own offer.
Two peer schools both offer merit based awards and one is larger than another. I’ve seen several times where schools have increased the initial award but usually only $1-3k more. This is not usually fruitful if you have already been awarded top merit, but if there is still room in the award amount - sometimes you can get a few thousand more.
Families whose financial reality doesn’t match what FAFSA and/or the NPC spits out. There has been a massive change in circumstance (medical bills, loss of a job, etc) that schools didn’t know about. Those families ask for a professional judgement review, and present the additional information to see if they can get their financial need based aid increased. Depending on the circumstances (and the resources of the school in question) - those awards are sometimes increased…as much as $5-7k per year in cases.
Unfortunately in all conditions - I haven’t seen awards changed upwards beyond $5k or so per year. I’ve never seen an award increased by $10k or more, unless it was at schools like HYP.
Edited to Add:
Often schools seem unsympathetic to the idea they are asking parents to spend X% of their yearly income on school - I cannot count how many times I have heard schools explain that their NPC numbers come from the expectation that parents/students/families will have 1. Saved some money for college, 2. Will use some current income for college and 3. Are willing to borrow future income for college.
Whether or not any of us agree with the feasibility of that premise, that is the premise most schools are working off when they create their NPC numbers.
Are any of the 70 apps going to be at UCD? Do professors get a tuition or admissions boost in the UC System?
With a 4.0 UW GPA, it seems like the kids ought to have some great outcomes unless the test scores aren’t 1400+ SAT (for outside CA) or the rigor and ECs aren’t strong. By great, I mean at least top 50-75 schools.
We’re not seeing any great outcomes for the 4.0 so far. Acceptances and near top merits, yes. But that is not a good outcome for us. A top merit scholarship without a FA grant is a denial.
EC’s are strong from my point of view. Both are year-round athletes and I don’t think many people understand the time commitment there. There isn’t time to commute to school, dedicate to their sport (but not very recruitable), do homework to get As. They also have other activities like music and art. I’m sure at Ivies people do all that plus start a non-profit etc. etc. (I’m skeptical though).
yes I agree they can get in to some top but maybe not tippy top schools, I believe. Near the top, things start to look more affordable. So it’s a question of how high can you go and still get in. The higher you go, the less it costs. Then, it’s a question of whether you can handle the difficulty and competition at that school once you get there.
I wish I could afford to have imperfect children.
Unfortunately I started in the mid-tier thinking they would be competitive and maybe get good offers and also so many cool schools at that level where you can do innovative things besides stress out about classes. And all the apps are free. That mistake is the major factor for the 70+ applications.
Also, a lot of people here on CC named a bunch of these schools where things came in at significantly less than NPCs showed. I’m not seeing that so far, but still holding out hope.
So yeah got to move up the food chain and make more applications, including ED2 to a need-met school. That’s what’s driving the application number up.
They would be thrilled to go to school at most of the places they’ve been admitted to already though.
There are two schools for my daughter and one for my son where the D3 volleyball team is really bad and they are recruited and have a spot. It was possibly implied that some FA strings might be pullable or at least communications facilitated.
In the only two cases where any communication on this topic happened, it seemed that negotiation was absolutely possible. In one case the AO flat out told my son to go out and apply to more schools, get some good offers, and come back and negotiate.
In the other case, where there has been no application yet but it’s an extremely good match school, with a very high acceptance rate, the AO said if “someone really shows that they are doing everything they can to try and get here we will find some way to make that happen. We take context into account, like you’re living in California and how many kids are in school at the same time,” and stuff like that.
In both cases it did not seem at all cut and dry. With Princeton and Johns Hopkins it’s surely different, but then pretty much everyone will get a good deal at either of those places, so that point is moot.
I think the intended major also plays a part in the merit/aid and negotiating it. Popular majors like CS and some engineering it’s hard to negotiate because they have a long waitlist.
To add to the anxiety for Ivy ED applicants, Cornell has announced a decision date of Dec 13 at 7:00 EST. Dunno if this will be the same for the others.
Good to know. S19 and a friend applied to different Ivies three years ago and were notified at the same time. May have been a coincidence more than coordination.
S22 got his first acceptance! Whew, to Univ. of SF! Although he still has 12 more apps out, it was relief to have at least one under his belt after what feels like ages and ages of working on apps!
She has a decent scholarship from them for the undergrad part, and we will fly out there in January so she can interview for additional. Not sure about grad school funding (but this would not commit her to them for that, just makes that program an option.)
to Univ. of SF! Although he still has 12 more apps out, it was relief to have at least one under his belt after what feels like ages and ages of working on apps!