Which schools will match the financial aid offer of another school if the other offer is better? I think Harvard, Yale, and Princeton do it, but does anyone know of any others?
Thanks!
Financial aid is far from transparent and is not as simple as “agreeing to match” another institutions offer.
All eight ivy league schools agree to provide need-based aid to every student (with no merit aid). Beyond that, each ivy league school is allowed to calculate “need” based on their own institutional formula. Some institutions, such as HYP, having larger endowments than other colleges, provide larger amounts of aid to their entire student body.
Some ivy league college’s financial aid packages (Dartmouth for example) are quite open about agreeing to match any ivy league school’s offer. Others, like HYP, will agree to reevaluate a student’s financial aid package if a student FAX’s them a better offer from a peer school. Sometimes those reevaluations will be close to, but not quite match, another school’s offer. But, there’s a catch to all of this . . .
Each ivy league school is only agreeing to match the financial offer of the other school for a student’s freshman year. They are not agreeing to match the aid for subsequent years. For that, each student (or their parent) must ask for a “Side Letter” stipulating that if the family’s income remains the same, the percentage of aid will remain the same in the student’s sophomore, junior and senior years. If a student does not receive a side letter, they should expect their financial aid to revert to about the original offer for the student’s remaining three years of school.
Some institutions will provide a Side Letter, others will not. A parent in the Yale forum recently said that Yale would not provide their family with a Side Letter. I’m not sure about the policies at Yale or the other ivies, and it may be something that each college handles on a case-by-case basis.
Because many non-ivy league schools offer a combination of need-based and merit aid (Duke, for example), none of the ivy league schools, when presented with another college’s better offer that includes merit aid, would agree to match the merit aid portion of aid. Consequently, sometimes an offer from a college like Duke will be superior to anything an ivy league school can offer because it provides a combination of need-based and merit aid.
Harvard does NOT matach, nor does it negotiate. If it finds you need aid, they will fully fund your need. But Harvard’s assessment of what you are capable of paying may differ from yours. As for the “side letter”, this is a red herring. If you continue to demonstrate need, you will continue to receive aid. The difference, however, is that your self help (summer and term time earnings) will increase from year to year.
@Sandovaya: Sorry, but you don’t understand how Harvard calculates the parent contribution of a student’s financial aid package.
Each college within the Ivy League is allowed to calculate the parent contribution of “need” based upon their own institutional formula, which means Cornell’s definition of “need” for one student is going to be different than Dartmouth’s definition of “need,” which is going to be different than Harvard’s definition of “need.” Therefore, come April 1st, it’s possible for a student to be accepted to Cornell, Harvard and Dartmouth and receive three financial aid packages which have calculated the parent contribution differently – sometimes with the dollar-difference being thousands of dollars per semester.
That’s what happened to my son when he was accepted to Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and Brown. If memory serves correctly Dartmouth calculated the parent contribution portion of my son’s financial aid package at about $36,000 per year, while Yale calculated it at $13,000 – a $23,000 difference per year. Dartmouth was very open about matching Yale’s better offer, but would not give a “Side Letter” meaning that if my son had matriculated to Dartmouth his aid for sophomore, junior and senior year would have been calculated with Dartmouth’s parent contribution rather than Yale’s.
And FWIW Harvard will recalculate the parent contribution of a student’s financial aid package when presented with a better offer from a peer school (college’s don’t like the word negotiate, but that’s essentially what they do). To wit: My son and daughter were attending Harvard and Yale at the same time and I FAXed Harvard my son’s financial aid package from Yale and questioned why Harvard was calculating the parent contribution portion of aid differently than Yale, resulting in our family paying more money to Harvard than we were to Yale. Keep in mind both colleges were looking at the same CSS Profile and FAFSA, but had different institutional formula’s for calculating the parent contribution. Harvard recalculated the parent contribution of my daughter’s financial aid package and very generously boosted it a couple of thousand dollars per year to come close to, but not exactly match, the parent contribution my son was receiving from Yale.
Harvard doesn’t always offer the best financial aid, sometimes Princeton’s aid is better due to the way Princeton calculates the parent contribution. Ditto with Yale. So, if a student is lucky enough to be accepted to multiple ivy league schools, it’s best to call the financial aid office and see if one college will recalculate the parent contribution of a student’s financial aid package.
Not true. I speak from experience as only last week Sarah Donohue from Harvard’s Financial Aid office addressed this topic. I assume you are also aware that the Justice Department takes a very dim view of what you suggest is happening, as it represents a very hamfisted attempt to resurrect the old “Ivy Overlap” process that was judged to be unlawful. As part of their consent decree with the Justice Department, the Ivy Group universities agreed to neither compare nor share information on financial aid, nor to enter into any “equalization” process.
In the case of Harvard, the university has made clear that they intend to focus FA on low income families while preserving support to middle income families. As such, when people have substantial home equity, they will expect it to be utilized.
Harvard has stated that while they and other universities have substantial resource, it simply isn’t right that they use financial aid dollars to subsidize students from families who have access to assets, i.e. home equity. I agree as to do otherwise is to make a mockery of the concept of financial aid. It is there to help students without assets, not those from families that refuse to help their own children.
^^ Well, either Harvard is outright lying on their website, or Sally Donahue needs to update the information to reflect a new FA policy: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/choosing-harvard/affordability
FWIW: Here’s a good article to read relating to the topic: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/30/cornell
Gibby, there are two issues involved.
One is whether the financial aid “matching” process represents an attempt by the Ivy Group universities to find away around the Consent Decree that banned the old “Ivy Overlap” process. What you were describing seems very blatantly in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of that agreement the universities made with the Department of Justice.
The second issue has to do with equity. At Harvard (and Yale) there is a huge debate going on about whether families with large amounts of home equity are “needy”. I personally do not think the policy of disregarding home equity will survive long at any university as it is inequitable.
The final issue is whether the universities should allow a select group of parents to play them off of one another. This smacks of buying students.
FIRST ISSUE: Maybe, but as the “matching process” has been on going for the last 7-8 years and the Department of Justice hasn’t seen fit to do anything about yet, it’s currently the way things are done. I don’t see the poorer ivies (Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia and UPenn) discontinuing the process anytime soon unless forced to do so. As such, HYP have all done the same in recent years.
SECOND ISSUE: As of today, Harvard does NOT include home equity in their FA calculation (despite what Sally Donahue said to you), while Yale DOES consider home equity. And it’s been that way for the past 6 years. And many of the poorer ivies are unhappy about that because technically Harvard could have allowed a family with a home valued at one million dollars and completely paid off to apply and receive financial aid if their income was less than $150,000. Is that right? Is it fair? Of course not, which is why the poorer ivies are unhappy. But, Harvard looks after itself first.
FINAL ISSUE: I guess you’ve never purchased a new car and have had to play one dealership against the another for the best price on the exact same car. I view college admissions FA in the same way. It puts the student (and parent) in control, not the colleges.
D was initially offered zilch by Dartmouth. I requested review and provide additional information, which included a generous offer from Harvard. Dartmouth was more interested in that than anything else I had to say and matched the offer within an hour of receiving a faxed copy. We did not ask for or receive a “side letter” and received what I thought was the appropriate amount of aid every year.
Gibby, if you believe that Harvard FA officers do not look at everything, you are dreaming. However, the DOJ just this year launched a fresh investigation, in response to complaints from Harvard law school students. Another thing to consider is the number of Pell Grant recipients at Harvard. It (and Princeton) seriously lag other universities, which means that fewer low income students are attending Harvard than universities with less generous financial aid. This issue was discussed just this past December at the meeting of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences.
Gibby: You mention “poorer” Ivies and seem to imply that you made the decision based on their FA award. I do hope your student had a say. Indeed, Brown is very, very different from Harvard, and Dartmouth is a very different place from Yale. You speak of Ivies as if they are all alike. They aren’t. A student attracted by Columbia’s “core”, or a woman who wanted to go to a women’s college within an Ivy University (Barnard) is unlikely to also want to attend Yale or Penn. You’ve compared Harvard and Yale. With knowledge of both, they are so different that all they have in common is their “Ivy” badge, which students talk about less than their parents.
@sadovaya: Welcome to College Confidential! As a new member to CC and the Harvard forum, please take some time to read my post history (other than the posts where I’ve directly responded to you). Click on my name and look though all 8,000 posts. If you do, you’ll see that I understand the differences between the ivies, but also subscribe to Jeffrey Brenzel’s philosophy: http://admissions.yale.edu/after-colleges-accept-you
Our family didn’t have the financial resources to send our kids to private college without massive amounts of financial aid or loans (which we were not willing to do). My wife and I told our kids we would happily pay for in-state tuition at our flagship state school, SUNY Binghamton, but if they could find a private school that costs the same or less, we’d gladly send them there.
My daughter attended Harvard, and my son attended Yale, for less than the cost of our flagship state school – so, it was a win-win situation for them and us. (My son was also admitted to Princeton, which offered comparable financial aid to HY). However, all the other private colleges my kids were admitted to, including Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Boston College, Williams, Pomona, Vanderbilt, Middlebury, and Wesleyan were completely ruled out because of insufficient financial aid. For some families like ours, financial aid (or the lack there of) becomes the deciding factor in where your kid goes to college. It worked out just fine for my kids, who have since graduated. I hope it works out for yours.
^^Guys, “seven or eight years ago” would place Harvard’s FA formulas at just about the time its endowment had hit an all-time high and was on the cusp of losing a fantastic amount of it to the credit meltdown. It’s highly likely they are not as generous with FA today as they were then.
In 2007, as the economy was tanking, Harvard (followed by Yale and Princeton) opened up their financial aid drawers to upper middle class families (defined as families making up to $180K. See: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/12/harvard-announces-sweeping-middle-income-initiative/
Since the class of 2016, Harvard (and Yale and Princeton) have scaled back their financial aid policies:
And this from Harvard’s website: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works
That is still significantly more generous than Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia or Cornell and most other private colleges.
FWIW: my kids were admitted to Harvard and Yale under the 2007-2011 financial aid policies. We paid about 10% of our AGI, which was between $150k and $180K, to each college. If they were admitted today, we’d be paying slightly more than 10% of our AGI.
@gibby is 100% correct. As of the 2015-2016 fin aid packages, Yale will match Harvard and Harvard will match Yale. Neither will call it matching. Both will deny that they match and both will be put off if you ask them to match. However, if you provide a copy of an award letter from the other institution and ask them to reconsider their award in light of the letter with the higher award, both will say that they “will re-evaluate awards in light of awards from a peer institution,” and then proceed to more-or-less match the award.