Negotiate the Best Financial Aid Offer With an Appeal Letter
College is expensive, so any option to lower your tuition costs is worth trying. The student loan hero says it’s worth trying to negotiate a financial aid offer and they ruin the whole process.
If you are offered help, you can try asking for a better deal by sending a letter of appeal to the college. As Student Loan Hero explains, administrators are allowed to adjust FAFSA data for special circumstances, and if you can prove circumstances based on necessity or merit, you could be able to close a better deal.
A needs-based appeal would be something like a job loss or pay cut, and a merit-based appeal would be a grade increase following a FAFSA application, additional letters of recommendation, or an offer from another school. Please provide third-party documentation when filing an appeal. Apart from that, they offer some more tips:
Keep the letter short and informative, avoiding lengthy emotional appeals. Financial aid administrators don’t want to hear tearful stories or complaints. They need data that they can plug into a formula that determines whether you get more money or not.
Include a breakdown of the numbers showing how much you will lose. Your job is to demonstrate your additional needs as clearly as possible.
Don’t ask for a specific dollar amount.
If you have an offer from another school, indicate that their school (the one you are applying to) is your number one choice and if they match the offer, you will attend.
Call this process “professional judgment” or “appeal,” not “negotiation” or “bargaining.”
Of course, there is no guarantee that this will work, but they list several schools that say they accept almost half of their appeals. All it takes is a letter, so it’s worth a try.
For more tips, you will definitely want to check out the complete student loan hero post at the link below.
How to negotiate a better financial assistance package | Student Loan Hero
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