Are scholarship offers negotiable?

notjoe
Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:32:08 +0000

I’ll just lay it out. My son’s first choice was Johns Hopkins. They turned us down cold. The message was, You pay what you pay, stop whining. Although completely proper and well-mannered, the head of financial aid had no interest in budging even a penny. I told him that we had a superior offer from an Ivy League school, and it was quite a large gap between the two. He said, “I hope your son enjoys the Ivy League.”

Notre Dame, on seeing my son not quite as interested as they hoped, so, without our asking, they went back to the well, fished around and got a private source to offer additional scholarship money beyond what the school was formally offering in financial aid. This dramatically improved our view of Notre Dame. My influenced my younger son to apply this year.

But my son ultimately wound up at Harvard. When their offer came in, although it was least expensive of the private schools, it was a little high according to their published formula and their net price calculator. So, I visited with our financial aid officer in person, she asked a number of questions, looking for ways to help me justify a higher award, and we found a few. I met with her at 9 am. We finished before 10 am. I went back to my hotel room, wrote her a nice e-mail formally requesting the additional aid based on what we’d uncovered together, and sent that along by about 11:30 am. I had an offer of additional aid by 3 pm.

My son was also accepted to the University of Maryland, but offered a scholarship with full tuition, room, board, books, and a little bit of additional money for educational purposes, so there were no questions of financial aid, and even less of anything to negotiate.