I will say this as for as Michigan goes and competing offers. My son is an engineering student at Michigan State. His friend has a full ride (academic) at MSU in engineering as well. He got that full ride because Michigan offered more money than MSU initially. His Mom basically bounced competing offers between both of the schools. Again, this is in engineering and it’s academic. That being said, I would think it’s very possible that Michigan would consider the “other” UM down south at Frost a competing school. Frost is a top 10 music school which Michigan is not (for music anyway although I think their MT program is). You could very likely toss out what your S has been offered there and see if they bite. I do think however that U Miami as a private school is likely more expensive than out of state at Michigan but I could be wrong on that. All things they will likely take into consideration.
@SpartanDrew, I would be very careful in your assessment of Frost being ranked a top ten school in music and Michigan not. Based on what source may I ask? Ranking music schools and conservatories are very subjective and complex. It is almost impossible to do. You would get a different list from different sources or different genres, or different instruments. As far as reputation, they are both very competitive at certain programs and/or instruments, and no, Michigan is not considered a top ten school for MT, they are considered the best MT program by their peers and applicants. They receive around 800 applicants to award close to 20 spots. Those are Curtis and Juilliard overall acceptance rate numbers.
Ok good point. Different schools are in top tiers for different things. I would never compare Frost to say a true music conservatory. Different schools for different disciplines. My main point was that I think U Miami and U Michigan are commensurate in the kind of schools they are and therefore Michigan might consider Miami a “peer school” when it comes to upping their scholarship offering. But then again maybe not. My point was more on the fact that they did that with our friend’s son in engineering. You can look up 4 different articles/sources on who considers what schools as “top tier” and get 4 different perspectives.
Michigan and Miami would not be peer schools in classical voice. I doubt a Frost scholarship would matter…particularly if you are a soprano. There’s another soprano just as good ready to take your spot. I have NO idea in Jazz however. Miami may be considered a peer.
But this matters for money negotiations only. As for success for students, send them where there’s a teacher that can help them grow…and won’t cause too much debt. A good teacher at Miami could make it a peer school to Michigan for your kid.
Michigan State is a notch (or two) below Michigan academically. So if the situation was reversed and MSU made the better offer Michigan probably would say take it. That is the parallel to the blog here - trying to leverage a lower tier School to convince a higher tier school to step up their offer.
Right now, we have UNT at 80,832, WP at 72,472, Miami-Frost at 137,224 and SUNY Purchase at 121,000. Waiting on scholarship info from Michigan.
Lots of fun discussion. I want to clarify what was on my mind when I made the long post about “the market” in post #333. If you look at the running numbers in post #345 above, you can see that there are distinct strata of price levels, depending on how you feel about spending certain levels of money. While it may be true that College XYZ may not have to budge on their offer of merit, it is more to my point that S does not have to budge on his expectations of price, and that any rationales of why College XYZ might have for how much they have in their budget, or whatever, don’t have to be analyzed, argued against, or considered. Of course, S could attempt price negotiations to arrive at a second wave of price data (which could be the same as the first wave), but wave 1 still is missing Michigan, and I don’t know if S plans to gather wave 2 pricing or not.
U Michigan in classical music is well above the level of Frost, they attract top tier students who otherwise would go to one of the top conservatories in many cases because Michigan combines top level academics with a very strong music program (Northwestern and Vanderbilt are similar in their attractiveness), my S nicknamed them the “Ivy league for dual degree BM kids” because of the number of top level music students he saw go that route. It isn’t that Frost is not a good school, it is, just that in terms of the level of students in the program Michigan in general has higher level kids, many of whom could go to one of the ‘elite’ conservatories, however you want to classify them.
One of the things that is frustrating my son at the moment is how all over the place the programs are with getting back to him, some schools came back quickly with the whole package, others are laggards, and until he has the whole picture he can’t make any decisions. There are roughly 3 schools that are at the top of his list, for example, one of them has given him the whole deal with a near full tuition scholarship, he has another where he has gotten in and has full tuition + stipend but they haven’t told him the studio, and another where he has gotten acceptance but no financial and they are really, really slow by reputation. All of them are roughly peers, so likely he could use #2 if he doesn’t want to go there as leverage, but he can’t do anything with #3 until he sees the financials, and with #1 he doesn’t want to try and negotiate unless he decides he wants to go there and that may be influenced by #3’s money…
My only suggestion is play the money game only when you seriously have decided to go someplace and their financials were lacking and if the money was right it would be your place to go, I have known kids and known of them who decided to play set one school against another and it burned them, schools basically figured out what they were doing and drew a line in the sand.
Correct it is not a free for all where you negotiate at several schools. You need to pick a top choice and be clear if they increase their offer your child will attend. And that negotiation should be right before the deadline so they know which kids declined their offers already…
Ditto to the above.
And I have two comments to add for two very different personality types (which I know well from working in finance with the public).
- The universities/colleges have been doing the scholarship game a lot longer than you. You don't know more than they do. The offer they give you is based on years of experience of working with talent. If you try to game the system, they'll figure it out quickly...and you will not win...regardless of the crazy story your next door neighbor tells you about "their success". I hear all kinds of success stories that aren't back up by numbers...even when I can see the numbers, the stories continue. That's known as exaggeration.
- You have every right to ask professionally, honestly and concisely for more money at any institution you are serious about. There are some reasons that hold more water than others. Regardless, some people, after doing diligent research, will start talking themselves out of asking. And it's OK not to ask. But why not extend your due diligence directly to the school and just check. It has been documented that these "some people" tend to be female.
My D was accepted to a festival last year that was paid. I required her (trying to make it a habit) to make a basic request for more money. The request was polite, appreciative and real. She is “poor” right now and I think has every right to ask for more help from an organization. She told her coach (who works at an opera company) and he said, Eww I think you should just accept what they give you. This caused my D to call me worried that they would rescind her offer. An hour later they contacted her and said they would see what they could do…and gave her a small bump up in the end. Other times she has received nos. She also has had phone calls where she inquired about money and was total straight-forward there is a straight fee and that’s that. I want her to not fear speaking about money and to advocate for herself. It irritates me that a simple, honest request to see if there are any more funds available when you are either spending a lot of money or time at an organization should be discouraged. It’s a great time to be talking to your kids about money and the need to advocate for themselves. Doing it in a disciplined way takes the guess work out. Anytime you are accepting work/school, talk with the organization directly about MONEY.
Ok my rant is done.
We had a stellar day here at our house. Finally, we received the (VERY generous) full aid package from Lawrence University. And this afternoon D received an offer of admission from Oberlin Conservatory and a screaming amount from them in renewable scholarship and grant money! There is an amazing amount of singing in the shower happening at our house right now, despite the recently removed wisdom teeth!
Wonderful news @dramasopranomom!
@dramasopranomom, congratulations!
@dramasopranomom Congratulations! What wonderful news!
Son was accepted to Eastman just now with a nice scholarship.
Congratulations @dramasopranomom ! Ditto w/ my D for Oberlin!
Congratulations @coloraturadad ! Be sure to let me know what she decides!
Agree with everyone who said to work with the student’s top choice(s) to get the best package they can offer, not pit one against the other. Eastman even said this up front literally saying “we will offer the best package WE can offer. We don’t really care what other schools offered you because that doesn’t mean we suddenly have more money”. Negotiate with your top choice on good faith.
Karen Riles covered this in her fantastic series on con admissions:
http://www.violinist.com/blog/karenrile/20144/15696/
@DesignDad - good article. I don’t think we have discussed getting the studio teacher involved (when there’s a relationship). For my D’s MM degree, she was in communication with the administration and her proposed teacher to increase the scholarship. Note it wasn’t financial aid so the discussion was simply “I’ll commit here if…”. I will say this seemed easier for grad school but I think it can work for UG if you have a teacher who is enthusiastic. Others can comment on that.
I think the other good point is you can’t ask for tens of thousands more…without a darn good reason…and that would probably be aid. For straight merit you need to be reasonable and really “know” what amount would make you commit. If you got $20000 at a school, would an extra $5000 a year or even $2500 do it for you? Serious, thoughtful requests are received better. If you need $10000 more a year you can always ask…you never know…but from what I’ve read, particularly for UG, the amts tend to be in the few thousands. So you do need to seriously think about the target school and what you would be willing to pay for it.
I’m not saying this will work for everyone, but one of my daughters’ undegrad appeals helped her merit grant at her first-choice school increase from $8000 to $24K per year. But the key was that she had scholarship letters from more competitive schools (that were not her first choice) for both double and triple the offer of her first-choice school (which was frustratingly low.) This was for a very small performance program, and the new offer came on April 30–I think part of the long wait had to do with the timing of others turning down grant money and moving on.
In the case of regular appeals, it’s true that it’s unlikely to receive more than a few thousand. A few thousand, multiplied by four years, can certainly help, but may not be a big enough difference if the gulf is too wide.