Has anyone had success with asking a private school for a larger package? Please explain how you went about doing it? Did you just ask for more or compare other offers? Did you reveal other schools you have been accepted to? Not necessarily because of a change in salary or financial situation.
For merit the answer will be no. Unless a college is desperate for students they will not care what other colleges have offered you.
You are very fortunate to have gotten that full tuition award from Ohio University. It’s a great school (I’m an alum from the Stone Age but visited a couple of years ago…excellent).
It sounds like you got nothing at Penn State.
Is that the school you would like merit from?
No, he got an award from Case Western but…
I doubt that Case Western cares at all what Ohio University gave him. They really aren’t peer schools…at all.
Schools set criteria for awarding merit aid…and your kid receives their merit aid based on each school’s criteria.
Case has different criteria than OU.
As @thumper1 mentioned, it has to be a “peer” U for the school to care at all and be at all interested in considering increasing a merit award. We did get our S a $1000 or $2500 more merit by showing the U we and he wanted that another “peer” U had offered him 1/2 tuition plus $1000 or $2500/yr more in merit. They said they normally don’t match but they did match and that helped us, especially since the award was renewed all 4 years.
@TomSrOfBoston, not true. Some schools give more merit if they want you (and by “some”, that’s almost all privates below the Ivy/equivalent level; and even schools like UChicago and WashU, at least in the past).
And it doesn’t have to be a peer either, IMO. Again, it comes down to if the school wants you badly enough. Approach it like negotiating a salary for a job offer. Say you really like the school, but you have a full offer elsewhere (or whatever you want to say), but if they are your number one choice, say that you’ll go if they can make the finances work.