Leveraging Scholarships to get better aid from another school

[pdouk76]

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Hello all,

Can any of you give me advice/stories on if it's possibly to try to get more aid from a private university by comparing their offer with my state school's tuition/scholarship? I'm 99.9% going to the private school, but I want to reduce my COA as much as possible. I don't know very much about these situations, but I have heard stories of students leveraging their fin-aid at one school to help get better fin-aid at another.

Thank you for any replies!

Edit: for context, private school is Feinberg. Public is Indiana U.

 

[HybridEarth]

+1, interested

 

[gyngyn]

We're used to it. The worst they can do is say no.

 

[ZorkDork1]

We're used to it. The worst they can do is say no.

Do you recommend being straight forward about it? Such as "Is there any way to lower COA to more closely resemble my state school's tuition."

or do you recommend a more sly approach, such as"I'd love to come here, but it is not a financially wise decision considering the considerably lower COA at my state school?"

Thanks!

 

[gyngyn]

Do you recommend being straight forward about it? Such as "Is there any way to lower COA to more closely resemble my state school's tuition."

or do you recommend a more sly approach, such as"I'd love to come here, but it is not a financially wise decision considering the considerably lower COA at my state school?"

Thanks!

Clear and honest is better than sly and icky.

 

[mdconcern]

Clear and honest is better than sly and icky.

 

[gyngyn]

How much time do most schools give students in terms of knowledge of their financial aid before they have to make a final decision about which schools they will attend?

You get until May 1st. If you get an acceptance after that, you get two weeks. As the start of school gets closer, the amount of time gets quite short. Two days would not be uncommon.
Since financial aid for the large majority is loans, it doesn't take long to figure out.

 

[Nica56744]

It's unlikely that they'll do anything, but it doesn't hurt to ask. At one school I got a very polite "We can't help you" and considered that the end of it. The next day, I got a call from the director of financial aid. It didn't change my financial aid package at all, but we had a really nice half hour chat about budgets and repayment options and other sources of scholarships. It left me with a very positive impression of the school.