With S20 we emailed the FA office. We told them how incredibly appreciative we were for their FA offer, that their school was our son’s absolute first choice, but he had received some merit offers from other schools. We listed the schools and amounts given. We reminded them that we were small business owners and our income could vary. We closed by asking if they could come close to these other offers. Super short and to the point.
They increased their offer enough for son to attend. It never hurts to ask!
For my D22, all it took was an email to FA office asking for reevaluation, and Amherst incrased its FA offer by $12,000 by next day.
However, I don’t know if it’s same for everyone, colleges like NYU and Georgetown won’t even listen much.
Have you connected with @homerdog? Her D goes to Colgate and is a dancer (not sure if she’s dancing in college). She is quite knowledgeable about SLACs. I’m not sure if either of her kids considered Hamilton.
Has anyone had experience reaching out to George Washington to try and get a better financial aid or merit aid offer? Are they amenable to this? (I can show proof of reduced salary)
@AnonMomof2 Yes our D is at Colgate. Dance is not at the caliber she did in high school (pre-professional ballet) and she’s decided she would not participate in dance on campus. I’ve watched Dance Fest (where all of the groups dance in a show each semester and you can watch online) and I agree with her. The ballet group is really bad. Don’t look like they’ve been trained at all. She considered the other groups but her contemporary and modern training is also way more than the other dancers so took a pass. All dance groups at Colgate are student led.
She did take an actual dance class in the theater department. There are only a few. She talked to the professor and passed out of the prerequisite because of her dance experience. It was a modern/African dance class and everyone else was a senior and she was still the star and featured dancer in all of the dances. There really aren’t any more dance classes for her to take. That class is the pinnacle of dance classes at Colgate. It’s not known for dance.
Just wanted to give you the real scoop. Not sure what you’re D’s level of dance has been in high school. D danced upwards of 30-32 hours a week.
Yes… it probably depends on the school. S20 is at Notre Dame, and they are notoriously generous with FA. They have also kept our COA pretty consistent.
S23 applied this cycle without applying for FA. Our financial picture has improved, and we did not think we would qualify. We thought we would see what kind of merit he could receive with his EA schools. And I am so over filling out the CSS/FAFSA every year that we wanted to try and see what kind of straight merit he could get. It is very complicated as business owners. It worked pretty well until son decided he wanted to convert his Villanova deferred EA app to ED2.
Since son was deferred, we knew we would not get any merit. So, I called the FA office and asked if we could change our minds and submit CSS/FAFSA. I already had them completed for S20. They said absolutely… no problem. So we submitted them, and we received a generous FA offer with his ED2 acceptance.
Evidently, people change their minds and apply for FA past the deadlines… we did. I think Villanova is one of those schools, like ND, that are not known for their merit, BUT they have plenty of “free money” that is given out through the FA department instead.
We’re going through some financial aid issues in our house too. Here’s my S23’s choices and the issue:
Hamilton COA $36K
Conn College COA $33K
Trinity College COA $16K
Fairfield U COA $16K (TE)
My son really wants to go to Hamilton but my husband and I think that decision would be irresponsible. He has a 529 to pay for some of it but with either Trinity or Fairfield being such incredible good deals, he could save that for grad school with those options (& not need to take out any loans). We have reached out to Hamilton and appealed the financial aid package, but there is no way it will come in as low as the others. Unfortunately, Hamilton is far, far is favorite between his options.
I imagine that over the next several weeks we’ll work our way through this, but lots of angst in our house right now.
He’s entering as a neuroscience major and will be pre-med for advising, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he veered off into some other type of healthcare, or even something else entirely. As a neuroscience major, I feel like grad school is in his future.
That’s true, but I don’t think the stipends are quite that high most places. Typically it will be enough to pay your expenses if you live alone, but not much more. I’d assume a stipend in the 30K’s to be safe. Some go up to the 40’s but it’s not as common.
The UCs are going to be at 34 or so next year. I think Princeton is going up to 55 or something this coming year. Georgia Tech is at 30k (state school). WashU is 37k – private. The privates seem to pay better. So you know where you need to go
Princeton is a major outlier. If you google “neuroscience phd stipend” you’ll see that nearly every school has them in the 30s, including top programs. It’s not as common to get into 40s, sometimes you’ll get it in a high COL place like Boston or LA.
And as long as it’s fully funded, choosing a PhD program based on the size of the stipend is not so high on the list of priorities. They’ll almost all come in somewhere in the 30s.
My husband’s PHD stipend was more like 25k. He graduated in 2015. Environmental Science from a large University, and also had written an EPA grant for his stipend. Never heard of one being 50-50k
Was 48k last year. I heard it was 55 for next year. It may be the low 50s. I may be wrong about the 55. And I think there has been some inflation, and union negotiations recently. 2015 was a long time ago.
And you are right generally. But I think the high ranked privates pay well.
Look at Cornell. It is not in a HCOL:
