Can anyone give some feedback on negotiating with the Yale FA office? My son has been accepted SCEA. The financial aid offer was not terrible but not great either. Unfortunately the change in the FAFSA tax return to submit, 2015, did not work to my advantage. I made $25K less due to less profit sharing in 2016, but Yale offer was based on 2015. Also my son is waiting to hear from Princeton. I am wondering if I should wait to see if he gets accepted there with a better offer and then just negotiate once with both the change in income and potentially better offer from Princeton OR contact them now showing the difference in income and then potentially again in April if Princeton happens and comes through with a better offer. Not sure if they will be open to multiple requests or do you only have one shot.
You can write in a change to income and send it in to Yale. We had to do this as well. There is an official form to fill out and you can fax it in. Call the admissions office and ask for it. They will re-evaluate aid on a case by case basis.
Fwiw, Princeton was over $20k more generous to us than Yale was. At the time (in P SCEA) we didn’t realize that was the “generous” offer and waited to see if Y or H would beat it…they offered less, and in the case of Y, much less. However, I believe it depends on what your circumstances are, because others have reported more generous Y stories.
It is definitely a possibility. All you can do is contact them and see what they say. Congrats for getting accepted to Yale. It is a huge honor to get into any of the Ivy’s. They are worth taking on some debt for the diploma. I am sure the FIN AID office can put together a package for you to enter.
Congratulations to you and your son! Although you could call Yale’s Financial Aid office now, you don’t have much leverage (other than the fact that you received $25k less in 2016). I would hold off until your son hears back from his other colleges. Should he receive a better financial aid award from one of Yale’s peer school’s (Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Amherst, Williams, Georgetown, UChicago, Duke), you’ll be in a better position to call Yale’s financial aid office and see if they would re-exmine your son’s financial aid in light of another school’s better offer. You should be prepared to FAX over the better offer to Yale and let Admissions know Yale is his first choice school, but its difficult for your son to accept the offer when another equally competitive college is giving better financial aid.
I agree with @gibby. Our friend’s daughter waited until all offers were in & then used Stanford’s almost free ride to negotiate Yale down to about $2k per year… If they want your son badly enough, they will make it happen.Good luck!
@milosh The comments above are very good, but hearing it direct from Yale might be even better:
The Yale Daily News ran a story a few months ago, including quotes from the Yale Fin Aid Director that covered in detail how to negotiate a better award.
Some excerpts from the article:
"Every student interviewed who showed Yale a more generous offer from another Ivy received a subsequent readjustment in their Yale package after conversations with the financial aid office.
Since each Ivy League school can only award financial aid based on a student’s estimated need, as opposed to merit or athletic ability, Storlazzi (Yale’s director of financial aid) said that if another Ivy calculates a higher aid package for a student than Yale does, Yale will typically do its best to calculate a similar number.
Ideally, Storlazzi said, Yale is eventually able to offer students a package that will enable them to attend.
“We don’t say ‘match,’” Storlazzi said. “We don’t use the m-word. But we want to see what we can do within Yale’s philosophy of needs analysis, and, frankly, we do want to see if we can come close to what the other school offered. We want students to decide on fit instead of on finance.”
The full article can be found here: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/11/11/how-generous-is-generous-enough/
@tdy123, @gibby Thanks for the input. I definitely plan on seeing what happens with my son’s RD apps and offers and will contact Yale at that point. But after reading the article (thanks for the link @tdy123) I think it would not hurt to contact the office now and request a review based on change of income and maybe home equity assessment just to see what their response is. I have a similar situation to one expressed in the article.
Would a better package from Williams be effective in a negotiation with Yale, or is it only Ivy League schools that Yale tries to match?
^^ Yes, I would think Williams would be a peer school to Yale.
Unless it has changed, I thought there was some difference in how these schools valued assets that can explain a difference in FA offers. Some schools ignore home equity and others I thought did not. As this is the largest source of net worth for many, and it would be easy to take any non retirement savings and buy down a mortgage, it would seem to be a revenue source that should be fairly considered especially when it falls outside of the “typical assets for income”.
Home equity is indeed a factor in financial aid: http://www.thecollegesolution.com/will-your-home-equity-hurt-financial-aid-chances/
However, institutional policy is the biggest-driver in financial aid. For example, a family earning $140K to $150K would qualify for financial aid at Yale, Harvard or Princeton. However, the same family would NOT qualify for financial aid at a state school and many private colleges.
Gibby: That is a 2014 article and things may have changed but it says Harvard and Princeton do not look at home equity at all and MIT does so in an extreme way. Just saying that peer institutions may not be willing to match in cases where home equity or other assets complicate an income picture with atypical assets.
^^ I agree. Yale DOES look at home equity while Harvard and Princeton do not, which is one reason why HP’s aid is often better than Yale’s as Yale must include home equity in their calculation.
@gibby @YaleGradandDad - yes to both of you. MIT and Y look at home equity (and do not look at private school tuition for siblings K-12) but for H and P it is the opposite.
@Gibby by @YaleGradandDad and @fretfulmother Does Stanford also looks Home Equity and private school tuition for siblings K-12?
@infinityprep1234 - I’m sorry, I don’t know. My son didn’t apply to S. Would it be publicly available info perhaps?
@infinityprep1234: As per Stanford’s Financial Aid website: http://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/parent.html
Thanks Gibby and fretfulmother
Just a heads up. No difference in their offer. Yale did increase the gift the exact amount they raised tuition this year, but did not make any adjustments based on my drop in income ($25000). Hard to figure out their methodology other than they try to go after as much of your money as possible.