hi teenie Lockwood and I wanted to give you some tips on how to negotiate with a with a college well I specifically how to improve a lousy financial aid offer a lot of parents don’t even think they can do this and I don’t blame them because most colleges don’t admit on the record that they will negotiate so I want to give you a couple of tips on how to improve a lousy financial aid offer after it’s been awarded the first tip is understanding college scholarships that you can’t do this you can approach the financial aid office and say hey I was hoping that you would reassess our financial aid award in light of these circumstances that you may not have been aware of when we filed the application because college financial aid offices will look at your application and review
it based on your formulas meaning your expected Family Contribution which is comprised of your income your assets and all sorts of other things but they will also take a look at your financial aid applications in light of non formulaic factors so what do I mean by that well one example is you know you fill out your financial aid applications based on what happened in the base income here so if you have someone graduating in 2014 your base year is the year before that 2013 but if you were let’s say laid off or you you’re self-employed and your business saw
a downturn toward the end of 2013 but you still showed it could income on your tax returns for 2013 that’s a misleading financial aid application that he created because it’s retroactive insurance what happened in the past not what is happening currently so a financial aid office will review your I will reassess your financial aid award based on non formulaic factors including unexpected loss of income another example is unexpected expense let’s say you had to go to the hospital you had some you had some relative move in and a parent or something move in and you need to spend money to take care of them expenses are not part of the financial aid formulas at all and an unexpected medical expense is I guess double not part on the finished a formulas so that’s that’s another ground for appeal a third ground for appeal is and this is a little a little trickier because most colleges will say we don’t consider this stuff but in my experience they do what
I’m talking about is another competitive financial aid award from another college that the college of question competes with so in other words it’s not just about kids chasing after colleges colleges themselves or chasing after kids so one example I like to talk about a lot is Cornell University because that’s where purlins is making a face at me behind this video like she always does but that’s that’s a separate issue Cornell will say we will consider we will reassess your award we will consider your financial aid award under the following three conditions if
the meet one unexpected loss of income number one number two unexpected expense and number three a an offer from another Ivy League college or an offer from any of the following schools then it lists competitor schools it’s right there in black and white I think that’s pretty cool now a lot of colleges say no we don’t do this we don’t you know we’re gonna give you our highest and best offer my response to them is if that were the case then how come every year I see examples where we improve financial aid awards we don’t always improve them sometimes we strikeout but last year we got someone an extra thirty eight thousand dollars the year before and extra 30 plus a thousand dollars it’s very common place as the Awards increases of two thousand five thousand ten thousand dollars by the way these are all per year Awards thirty thousand per year so my advice to you is don’t you know don’t assume that you’ve got the best offer always ask my left comment that
I would make to you is if you have a junior meet last 2015 the best thing you can do to improve your chances when you negotiate with the college is choose your list of schools strategically if you’re seniors little too late for that for your junior this is the time to be expanding your list of schools not only for best fit or best football team on Saturdays or you know best sticker on the rear window of a car neighborhood but also schools that strategically historically have competed with one another okay so I’ve talked a lot more about how the financial aid formulas work and how to improve your chances of getting 10,000 20,000 30,000 dollars a year even if you make a six-figure income I also get more details on how negotiate at walk through an Ashland negotiation example national butter at my workshops and I’ve got three this week and I’ve got a whole lot much more teed up the rest of the month and the rest 2013 so please check out the link at the bottom of this page and I hope to see you soon thanks for watching you you
