D will be a vocal performance major next year. She has 2 top schools. UNT is affordable, but far away and huge. DePauw is small, nurturing, close to home - but might feel too much like high school. DePauw’s scholarship offer arrived Friday. D will need another $10k to attend. She is not sure if she wants to try and use her UNT offer to negotiate. How long do I give her before we send a deposit to Texas? Can she take a week to think things over before trying to negotiate? FWIW - the head of the DePauw vocal dept told us point blank to negotiate if the offer wasn’t what we needed.
Will all schools send complete financial aid packages this week?? We don’t know about loans or work/study yet. I’d like to be finished already!
My S graduates in May from DePauw with a BM in vocal performance. He’s been very satisfied with the training (amazing voice professor), as well as the performance opportunites in solo, choir, master classes, and opera. Please message me with any specific questions.
Re: the scholarship offer, it was our experience that DePauw was very willing to negotiate. We spent several weeks in that process with them. Ultimately, they asked for a number we had to have, we aimed high, and they met it. Knowing the schools they were up against seemed to motivate them as well.
Now we are on to the grad school decision process!
While I have no experience with negotiating financial offers because I only got one from Luther after I sent in my deposit there five years ago, I’m totally positive, based on what I’ve read here, that you can negotiate the offer from DePauw and that they would understand if she needs more time to think things through before negotiating. Best of luck to you and your D!
@cgmndt- You can certainly attempt to negotiate any financial aid awards; if the school has it to give, you can be successful, if not, then it’s tough. An undergrad has untl May 1 to notify their school of an acceptane and send the deposit, but no longer.