Basically what you are espousing is duplicitous and unethical. For better or worse, there is an established set of rules and procedures by which competitive universities (and high school administrators) require you to conform to if you want to attend their schools. What sort of example are you setting for your daughter? This will probably be the last six months that she lives with you. Instead of setting a good example for her of how to act as an adult with a strong moral compass, you are teaching her how to bend/break the rules solely for (a potentially small) financial benefit.
You mention that “we have no need” which does put you in an enviable position. Parents in this position with high-stat kids often end up with the following decision - to either send the kid to the best school (academically plus fit) at full pay or else find a less desirable school that provides merit money. For many kids the better school is actually the preferable option as the kid who gets into, say, a top 30 school may find himself the smartest kid in the room at at top 75-ish school and the $15k per year merit scholarship becomes a false economy. Sometimes you get lucky and the lower ranked school may actually be a better fit, for example the kid who truly would rather be at Villanova than stuck in the middle of Indiana at Notre Dame. In addition, the kid with the Notre Dame degree could end up making more money in the first five years of his/her career to more than offset the higher cost of attendance so it truly is a false economy.
At the end of the day, given that schools don’t really bargain that much with merit scholarships, you may end up haggling with schools over an extra $5k per year when your focus should really be which school is the best academic fit for your daughter.
Agree with @blossom , @sybbie719 and @londondad . Trying to play schools against each other will typically backfire. Asking for professional judgment or a reconsideration is appropriate with one institution, to see if they can revisit their FA offer and, if it is manageable for your family, you accept. To try to get school A to come down, then planning to take that new offer and show it to school B to get them to come down is not only a bit smarmy, it will not work and can leave a black mark on your child’s HS. As you indicated, you may not care, but that isn’t a vary nice thing to do.
And every year the tuition and related costs will go up, and then what? Unless the scholarship matches tuition and is guarantees to cover increases, you will possibly only gain something the first year.
I think @fatherofSam has the right to ask for a higher merit award and the schools have a right to say no. He’s already said he’s not going to lie to the schools, that he’s going to tell them they are ‘one of the top’ choices.
My daughters’ school and GC had nothing to do with their college applications. Zero. We ordered a transcript from the office and picked it up in a sealed envelope and sent it in. GC didn’t even know where we sent it.
I don’t think there are an established set of rules, and if there are, no one told me. I didn’t agree to play by those rules of only talking to one school at a time.
The OP kid has acceptances to two OOS public universities that do not meet full need for need based aid, and do not have automatic merit awards either. Miami and VA Tech are not peer schools. These two schools will not care what the other school given as award.
It’s highly unlikely that VS Tech is going to increase a merit award from $5000 to $19,000 (which is what Miami gave).
But go ahead and ask. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
OP - I don’t believe your original post was about increasing your merit aid at VT to what you received at Miami. If that’s your intention, I don’t think that VT will entertain that as they won’t consider Miami U a peer and VT doesn’t really offer much in terms of merit $ anyway. That is probably a waste of time.
However, I do think appealing Miami U is still an option. Although it’s about more than stats, your son’s stats are very good and Miami is still trying to attract top students. In fact, they may believe he is using Miami as a safety. If you haven’t yet visited, he may want to attend a Make It Miami day and you could also talk to a financial aid counselor while you are there. This would certainly express your son’s interest, let’s him gauge fit, and let’s you discuss the merit aid in person.
My D is visiting Miami and doing an overnight in April. PM me if you want to discuss further.
fatherofsam – you are correct. We are not expecting VT to come up to $19k from $5k. We have visited Miami and are now considering a Make it Miami day soon. I may PM you for more discussion later. Thx. Good luck to your D!
Hi there, your leverage point is that if aid is increased, your son will attend. Those other meritorious students who got more money may not be planning to attend Miami next year.
If this is not the case, don’t say it.
here is some wording that may help you: "my son is very excited about the academic opportunities at Miami and would love to be able to attend. However, we are struggling to make the right financial choice for our family. (Insert any special circumstances here.) He has been admitted at (state flagship) where his cost to attend would be $xx. That is a $yy difference over four years. But he really prefers Miami for its xxx.
We would appreciate it if you would review his application to see if his merit award could be increased to make it possible for him to attend Miami next year."
Be humble, polite, and recognize that you will have to pay more than the state flagship for him to attend an OOS public. But Miami may sweeten the offer if they know he will attend.
I am following this closely. My dd (OOS) also received $19 from Miami (34 ACT/3.94uw and 4.64 w GPA - most rigorous schedule with 10 APs). We were surprised after reading about the other much more generous offers that people here on CC received. We flew in for a multiday visit and her ECs, recs., and essays were all very good. Direct admit to Farmer and honors. She loved Miami and it was at the top of her list. We really thought she would get more merit money from reading the forums, looking at the common data set, and the information from admissions at our visit. The cost of attendance went up significantly for this cohort (over $35K for tuition) so even though they have the Miami Promise - the tuition increase seems HUGE (X4 years) and that makes the merit award seems further diluted. It has been very disappointing reading so many here on CC with lower stats - sometimes much lower - who have been given so much more merit ( from $22K - 35,500/year OOS and great in state merit awards were reported - $16K/year) but it has helped dd move on – they just weren’t that into her. I know we shouldn’t compare but reading some of the offers that are being reported here are leaving us scratching our heads.
We are disappointed because we could see her thriving there. We know she is stil conflicted since she has not yet declined the offer yet - even though she has declined all other offers at this point except for the one she says she is attending. We do wonder if we contact them that they might come up a little to make the cost more reasonable. If not, they will have our dd’s pot of merit to distribute to someone else - hopefully upping the amount for some of the other kids in the same bucket.
I realize this a game of odds for the school - how little can they offer to entice kids to attend without giving $ to kids who would attend without the extra $. I also think that they do not realize the extent of the information available on the internet in real time (kids getting offers and the amounts).
I think it’s a common fallacy to think that if your kid turns down a merit award, that means more money for the college to distribute to another student. The colleges work off of a series of alorithms- they do not expect 100% of their offers to be accepted. In some years they may have a few more acceptances- so they tweak the model, and the next year they offer less money to hit the target.
You can’t look at “lower stats” and wonder why a kid got more than your kid. The awards themselves are holistic- a kid from Hawaii may fill a different slot than a kid from Suburban Chicago at Miami; a kid with a stack of literary awards and published short stories has a different profile than a kid who is on their HS tennis team. It’s not an undifferentiated pot of money which the school distributes based on test scores (high scores equal more money). It’s a carefully calibrated pricing strategy to assemble the desired Freshman class according to both a long term strategy (things like racial diversity, more international students tend to be long term objectives) and short term strategies (replace the departing bassoon player in the main orchestral group, add more “theater kids” and fewer prep school jocks).
You might be concerned with the effect it will have on your two younger children. If you negatively affect the GC’s relationship with schools it could materially damage the opportunities of students who graduate after your daughter. You need your GC to be a strong advocate for your children. If they have a choice to press for an acceptance for your kid or the child of another family, whose kid do you think is going to get an extra push?
UPDATE: Our son has decided to attend Miami University! I’m so glad this decision has finally been made. Thanks to everyone for their comments on CC. It takes a village!
londondad, Virginia Tech did but Miami did not. Miami said that their initial offer is always their best and final offer.
Unfortunately, it was still going to be quite a bit more expensive to attend VT, especially with tuition increases over the next four years. At Miami all costs are frozen for all four years. And, Miami has a program for my son that will allow him to get his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in only 5 years total. So that will save my son a whole year of school and that expense too! That was the clincher for him. I don’t think they offer it in every major, however. His program is Environmental Science. Hope this helps!
The OP said in a VT thread that they contacted the Director of Financial Aid and admissions counselor and updated with an academic award and told them VT was his first choice. They were given $4,000 more a year