Reviewing Financial Aid Offers

Negotiating financial aid offer with a UC

April 2014

I didn't see anything in the archives so I hope someone has light to shed on this matter. My daughter is about to graduate from HS. Her top picks for college are private schools on the east coast. We're waiting on final finaid letters but it looks like her UC option is providing proportionally more money. I know people negotiate with pvt schools when the monetary offer is better at the #2 school & sometimes the #1 school will match the money. Does anyone have experience negotiating with a private school around a UC or other public univ offer? My policy is if you don't ask, they can't say yes (or no!) but just wondering if anyone has specific experience in this regard. Congrats to the 2014 families out there in bpn teen land & thank you!

college mama

This is not exactly on point with your question but maybe close enough. I agree you should ask. It's not as though they're going to treat you any worse. We were offered no aid from UC, but daughter's first choice (an Ivy) eventually offered enough that it cost essentially the same as going to UC would have -- and I had basically said that that was our cap when I requested a review of the initial [lower] award. So, in that sense, they did ''match'' the UC offer. I know the Ivies have a policy of matching each others' aid offers and will take non-Ivy aid offers into consideration as well. It can be tricky to find a given school's policy on its website, but you have nothing to lose. Good luck! AboutTheSame

Additional thought, although you may not have time for this. [I'm not sure when the acceptance deadlines are & when the next newsletter will come out. Folks, when you have a time-sensitive question, think about including your email for direct responses. You can even create an account to use for the purpose and then abandon.]

Create an account at CollegeConfidential.com [you want the ''talk'' forums] and post your question under the forum for the college[s] you're interested in. With any luck, you will get some feedback on how that college responded to such requests. Maybe not for matching UC specifically, but it's worth a shot. AboutTheSame