Negotiating scholarships / financial aid - how to?

connections
Sat, 18 Mar 2017 12:45:24 +0000

@kentmtmom, yes, a need based scholarship/grant is based on FAFSA and, for many private schools, CSS Profile.

Not all schools can or will meet your need. FAFSA is simply a statement of your need, not a requirement for the college. And also schools can view loans as meeting your need. So it’s entirely possible to have a FAFSA say your EFC - estimated financial contribution - is 0, and for the school to say you need to pay/borrow $40K. Or $65K for that matter… It happened a lot to us, and is why we applied to a wide range of schools.

Be sure to apply to a wide range of schools. Private schools are generally able to give need based grants and scholarships at higher rate than publics. Public schools in general are not able to give large grants. Pell grants - from the gov’t - are very small, a few thousand.

CSS measures holdings and investments etc as well as income. So it’s possible you can have a small income but because your investments/holdings are large, you will have low need.

I agree with @Jkellynj17 that the situation overall stinks. It is what it is. I have 5 kids, & even with generous grants/scholarships over the years, I do have $10,000s in education debt, as do my kids.