If Cornell and Penn gave me significantly more aid than Princeton, is there any chance that Princeton may be able to match their offers?
Princeton’s supposed to be the most generous of the 3 (actually, the most generous of all meet-need schools) so likely yes.
ETA…no way all three of these “gave” you an offer already. Princeton is SCEA,mand Cornell and Penn are ED schools. You would only have an acceptance and financial aid offer from ONE of these at this point.
I would be very surprised if Princeton’s offer wasn’t the highest at the end.
Princeton’s offer will likely be the best offer.
I haven’t been accepted into all the colleges of course, but hypothetically if you applied to all the Ivys and some schools e.g. Dartmouth somehow provided MORE aid than others like Yale, is it possible for one school to match the highest offer?
You should get the best offers from Yale, Harvard and Princeton as they are the most generous. You can certainly asking others to match the offers of the more generous schools…but they might not…because they don’t have pockets that are quite as deep.
I guess I always wonder…if you are applying to all of these, wouldn’t you be pleased to attend any of them? Why wouldn’t you just the the best bet price offer?
One can imagine unlikely situations where Princeton finaid offer may not be the best. For example, cases where the amount of aid is open to a finaid officer’s judgment (self-employment/business, very large retirement account, complicated family situation, etc.) or preferential packaging by some other Ivy. Most probably P only considers H & Y as peers and may refuse to match other Ivies.