Our son has applied to numerous schools and is waiting to hear from three of them. We received his estimated FA package from Case Western, and has received scholarships from Univ of Illinois-Chicago and Univ of Alabama-Birmingham. For the other schools we don’t know what his FA package will be. When is the best time to attempt to negotiate the best FA package?
Son’s stats - SAT 2180, unweighted GPA 3.98, weighted GPA 4.05 (max of 4.1), five AP classes (5’s on tests), many extracurriculars (varsity sports and community service).
I know that if we attempt to leverage one school’s offer against another school, they have to be comparable schools. Would you agree with these groupings of comparable schools?
Group 1 - Rice, Washington Univ-St Louis
Group 2 - Case Western, Pitt, Univ of Minnesota, Boston Univ
Group 3 - Virginia Commonwealth Univ, Univ of Alabama-Birmingham, Univ of Illinois-Chicago
His scholarship offers so far work out to be:
UAB - near full tuition ($17,500/yr)
UIC - $7250/yr + applied to Honors College and additional scholarships
Case Western - $25,000/yr + applied for additional scholarships
Any chance of getting UIC to up their offer to match UAB?
Depending what Rice and WashU come back at, any chance of Case increasing their award?
Well, really, you can’t do anything until you have those other acceptances and aid packages, right?
My opinion:
Re: getting UIC to increase their offer to almost full tuition…if I were betting, I would say no. This is a public university, using public funds. They likely have a different set of criteria for awarding merit aid than UAB. But certainly, you can ask.
Your group two schools mix publics and privates. I’m not sure you can exoect Boston University or Case to have net costs that are the same as for Pitt and Minnesota…which are less expensive.
And if you are instate for any of these schools…don’t expect an OOS public or a private university to match your net cost at an instate public…not likely to happen…possible, but not likely.
Just keep in mind…some schools will not discuss changing your financial aid award at all…unless there is some change in financial circumstances.
Understood on all your points. But I figure it can’t hurt to ask any of them.
I had them grouped by Institution rankings, not just by private/public. And unfortunately we live in Pennsylvania–land of the most expensive in-state tuition rates (PSU and Pitt). It will be cheaper for my son to attend UAB or UIC as an OOS student than to stay in state at Pitt most likely.
It’s not easy doing a lot wrangling for more money among a lot of colleges. THe fin aid officers are going to be getting a lot of this, and some can tell if it’s truly a student who wants to go to their school but is financially constrained due to a much better deal at another school, and if a little sweetener can be added to the package, maybe mom and dad will cough up the difference. They are often not as sympathetic with the wheeler dealer mom or dad in the picture. You can certainly give it a go.
We did get increased merit money from a school that does not tend to give much merit and that isn’t interested in negotiating, but that was with DS who really wanted to go there discussing the issue with his admissions officer. I 've known great negotiaters get nada in this area
The strategy that works best from what I have observed is “You are my top choice school and if you increase the merit aid to X which matches Y college I will attend”.
Obviously, you can’t use that to play one school off against multiples. And for need-based aid, you really can only negotiate using facts- i.e. “we are paying X every month for a grandparent’s unreimbursed nursing care, here are our bills for the last 24 months, we’d appreciate another look at our financials”.
My son was speaking from his heart, and I think the admissions officer knew it. Even so, the award was not quite met, and son was asked to fax the accept letter from the other school. We would have likely given into the his first choice school–but we were really asking him to think it over and take the cost and other ramifications through. So, no “horse trading” skills in my department
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Any chance of getting UIC to up their offer to match UAB?
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Probably not. You’re asking a school with little resources to come up with another $40k for your child ($10k per year). Likely, they’re thrilled to be able to have offered what they did.
@Alfonsia based on what other schools are offering in merit aid. Let’s face it, it is still a competitive market for getting good students. Not saying all schools will negotiate, but I figure it can’t hurt to ask.
@Alfonsia we haven’t heard anything from UMinn, other than he was accepted. Haven’t heard about Honors College or anything on the financial side of things.
It seems though, that you are pitting apples against oranges, knowing that UAB and Case would be safety schools,
Case for e.g is more expensive than e.g. Uminn even with the nice 27K, so it becomes irrelevant. You have merit from the schools in your pick for a reason, the higher rated schools don’t need to offer carrots to kids who just have the reasonable entry stats vs superstar stats/hook etc. The end game for merit only people like us is COA really.
I will stay away from UIC and surprise they even offer you $7.25K, I know students already accepted in Honors program (last yr) who got Zero $ from UIC with same or even better stats. If its UIUC then its a different story.
PITT and Case are much better schools and they do offer good Scholarships and do negotiate if student himself shows real interest. I am surprise your son did not apply to UA Tuscaloosa but applied to UAB. UA is very generous with Merit $$ for OOS students with good Stats like your son has…
WashU is the best choice your son has, did they accepted him if Yes they any good Merit $$ from that School you should take it. In the past WashU give admission but never follow by good Merit $$.
Son is majoring in Biomedical Engineering, so that eliminates Alabama. UAB was only picked because of guaranteed scholarship money to hopefully be used for bargaining with comparable state schools.
Not sure why you would consider Case a safety school. They are a very strong engineering school, especially in BME.
Good news, we just found out that he got the Deans Scholarship at VCU–although his SAT score is higher than the average for the Provost Scholarship which is worth twice as much money. So I will be contacting their FA office to ask about that. I think he probably gets penalized because our high school only weights AP classes by 6%, so the highest GPA you can end up with is around a 4.15–not the ridiculous 4.6 to 5.1 numbers they claim as the GPA range.
Why can there be a universal standard for how schools weight classes and calculate GPAs???
@mom2collegekids After touring several of the schools my son applied to, I’m about ready to declare him a URM. Because a white middle class male is rapidly becoming a URM on these campuses!