So I’m an international student, and I got into Grinnell with $29k in financial aid, meaning I’ll be paying around $33k. This is a huge amount of money for me, and I probably won’t be able to attend with all this. When I asked if I could make an appeal, they said that I would need new and compelling financial information for the appeal to succeed. Right now, the biggest reason I need more aid is because the first time around, I made the mistake of overstating the values of some assets in my ISFAA/CSS profile. I was thinking of sending in a revised version of the ISFAA, along with a narrative to emphasize the reasons I would require more aid (Grandmother recently moved in, my mom’s health condition is deteriorating, we’re supporting our cousin through her MBA because her family’s economic condition isn’t sound, stuff like that). My question is, what do I include with these to maximize my chances of getting more financial aid? Also, I must mention that I require a lot more financial aid, probably around $20k more.
Although taking care of your grandmother and paying bills for a cousin are nice things to do, colleges consider them choices and don’t award extra aid to families because of it. If your family has high medical bills for your mom and you have receipts to show them, they may consider that.
How much did you overstate the value of your assets and why was the estimate high? I’m not sure colleges will just accept a lower number without some sort of documentation.
We overstated them pretty high, and I guess I can get some documentation on the real value of these assets, would that work?
The school will look at your ability to finance your education. If they gave you more money so that your family could continue to pay to your cousin’s educational expenses, they would essentially be helping finance the cousin. It doesn’t really matter if your parents already committed to helping the cousin. Schools expect parents to fund their own kids first. In the US, we don’t have the same cultural responsibility to extended family members that other cultures do.
I hope everything works out for you. Perhaps you can pool the resources of your extended family to help, in the same way that your family is helping your cousin?