<p>waiting along with everyone but will share in april after it all comes out (hopefully well). I did get some good advice about negotiating with schools (not necessarily art schools so I may find that it doesn’t apply) from parents who had been through this a few years ago. The advice/messages confirmed my earlier view. Many schools (not just art schools) make small or moderate offers of aid. There are some big scholarships at most schools but they go to just a select few usually through some competition or some pretty high prerequisites (national merit finalist, etc). Then, they scatter moderate merit aid to the remaining attractive students to see which ones are really seriously interested. SOme students will come back and negotiate an show letters from other schools. The school will sometimes increase the merit offer if student seems to genuinely have a very good offer from a similar school. Many students just take what they are first offered which may be sufficient or the best offer they have. Thus, from the school’s point of view they can offer more aid to more students with more likelihood of getting some of them than if they blow all merit aid on a couple of star applicants. The PMs I have received indicate that this seems to hold true for some private LACs and small universities with who want to compete with slightly more prestigious schools. So SAIC may offer more if you have a more generous offer from MICA or the reverse. At the same time, a good offer from VCU really doesn’t make any difference to MICA or SAIC because they aren’t really competing with state schools because the whole cost/tuition is so radically different anyway. </p>
<p>I stress the MAY because who knows? However, they aren’t going to snatch away the original offer of merit aid just because a parent points out they have a better offer from another school…they just may say “no”…seems fair to me.</p>