<p>My d is accepted to CMU SCS and MIT. Still waiting hear from other colleges. The MIT’s financial aid is $10,000 in forms of loan and workstudy program. I haven’t received anything from CMU but I assume it will be about the same. Is there anyway we can work with universities to bid for my D? If there is, how do you go about doing it?</p>
<p>contact the school. what was your Fafsa EFC. schools that use the profile will have a different method for determining what THEY think you can pay.</p>
<p>There was a segement on The Today show the other day about this. The counselor said you should call the colleges fine aid office and tell them the offers you got from other schools and ask them if they will meet or exceed the other offers. He said that in many cases, they will.</p>
<p>Loans and workstudy are not aid. I don’t care what the letters say. (or that it might be subsidized loans). I think that is a cruel hoax and we discarded schools that perpetrated that hoax. The real message is we aren’t giving you any aid. You have to pay or finance the whole thing. If there had been some merit money, then it is easier to get schools to bid. If there had been need based grants (not loans), then you can ask to have them consider additional information or what other schools provided. But loans? geesh.</p>
<p>If other schools come through with anything other than loans, you might be able to get them to reconsider by showing them the other offers.</p>
<p>I certainly think of work study as aid. If my S qualified for work study, he’d be getting more pay for working on campus. The best paid jobs on his campus are work study ones, and they also are more work study jobs than other jobs for students on campus. Getting a campus job is very important for students who need money – particularly if they don’t have cars, so can’t work off campus.</p>
<p>CMU’s financial aid director is very open to negotiation and says so. They often will match like schools’ packages if they want the student enough.</p>
<p>There are a number of threads here about the problems with work study. The difficulty some have landing a job, getting enough hours, earning what they say you are qualified for. If it is make or break I would take it with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>The only thing I have ever heard that works is showing the financial aid you received from a peer institution and asking if a university will match it. In your case it sounds like MIT did not offer adequate financial aid, so you probably wouldn’t want to show it to CMU anyway. CMU is not known for good financial aid, but I hope you are lucky. However, even if they are generous, I doubt that MIT will consider CMU a peer school and will probably not change their offer unless you have some new financial information to share with them.</p>