College Financial Aid: The Art Of The Appeal

After months of waiting, high school seniors have most of their admission decisions in hand. If they are lucky and planned thoughtfully, they have options. Now comes the hard part of choosing a school.

News flash: College is not cheap! It can, however, be affordable. Unfortunately, families often see the financial aid package and are deflated or deterred. For those who need financial support (the majority of applicants) the decision of where to enroll is not just about where they want to go, but also where they can afford to attend. When these two realities conflict, families wonder if they can appeal the financial aid package at the school where their student most wants to attend. Is it acceptable to appeal a financial aid offer, and if so, when and why?

These are just a few of the questions that surface at what can be an overwhelming time of making big decisions with significant financial ramifications. To help unpack the financial aid appeal process, I assembled a team of experts to answer the most common questions.

Meet The Experts

Ashley Bianchi is director of student financial services at Williams College.

Matt Carpenter is a founder of College Aid Pro, a company that has developed software to “demystify financial aid and help students find schools that will give them the most free money so they can graduate debt free and live richer lives.” They offer free resources, videos, and appeal letter templates on their website.

Eric Kopp is director of financial aid at Franklin & Marshall College.

Ron Lieber is the “Your Money” columnist for The New York Times and author of “The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Roadmap for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make.” He is also the instructor in an online course about merit scholarships.”

Mark Salisbury is a co-founder and CEO of TuitionFit and executive director of Pathways Planning and Insights, two organizations dedicated to helping students and families discover affordable educational opportunities beyond high school.

Common Questions

Should families appeal a financial aid package that is lower than they had hoped?

Salisbury says, “Any school that tells you that you can’t appeal is breaking federal law.” He adds, “There is no downside to appealing. It’s not like you’re saying ‘What’s behind door number 3?’ and if you get it wrong you lose what you got. This is not The Price of Right? It’s not a game show. You’ve got a financial aid offer letter, so nobody should be afraid of appealing. Nobody should be worried about any sort of revenge act that college is going to take.”

Bianchi explains, “All colleges are required to provide some sort of appeal process per federal guidelines. These processes vary widely and are highly individualized.” She recommends that “if the college does not disclose the appeal process in their award offer, families should seek out that process and be persistent as we all have the goal of enrolling the students we admit and making it as affordable as possible.”

Carpenter agrees, saying, “With few exceptions, we always recommend appealing. The best cases for appeals include; change in income, job loss, one-time distributions, business owners, homeowners (at colleges that consider home equity), split household families, low retirement savings, medical/dental expenses, private colleges that use the federal methodology when calculating need-based aid.”

When should families appeal?

Kopp says, “I think families can and should start appealing after they have received ALL of their acceptances and financial aid packages.”

Lieber offers, “Timing is a challenge. On one hand, if you need to ask for more money, you want to do so while there is still money in the budget to give out. On the other hand, if a school is having trouble meeting its goals for both heads in beds and revenue per student—and every school has a goal for both and is tracking it each day in the spring—they’re more likely to discount further the more desperate they get. Sometimes they get desperate a month before the May 1 reply date and sometimes they get really desperate the week before. He adds, “It’s probably best to ask once you’re clear what additional discount you need to make the numbers work (and have full knowledge of what all of the schools’ final prices are).”

Bianchi says that “families should feel empowered to appeal if they can’t afford the net price they are being asked to pay. Whether it’s because a family situation has changed since the application or they were not able to give enough detail to give context to their situation, families should feel like they are able to have a back and forth with their financial aid advisor.” She explains, “Financial Aid staff often don’t have enough information in the initial application to make nuanced decisions when families don’t fit into the “typical” box, so we hope that families will appeal with more details so that we can respond to individual cases since financial aid is not one size fits all.”

How likely are appeals to result in changes to a financial aid package?

Kopp says, “My honest opinion is that in this day and age, with heightened competition for students, appeals are more likely than not to generate SOME amount of additional aid for students.” He adds, “This is not to say that every single one would be successful, but the likelihood is probably quite high.”

Bianchi agrees, saying, “For legitimate changes in circumstances or incomplete/inaccurate information, the change is pretty likely. For a ‘can you do anything more’ type of appeal (which we also welcome), I’d say the chances are less but it can’t hurt!”

Carpenter explains, “There is a huge variation in outcomes. Generally speaking, we say that we expect to be successful at private institutions and we expect a ‘no’ from state schools. Of course, there are exceptions on both sides. Our data shows we are about 75% successful at private schools, and 25% at public institutions. We tell families to anticipate another 3K-5K/year if the appeal is successful. Again, there is a huge range here. Our average YTD is closer to 11K, but we’ve had over a dozen appeals that came back with more than 40K (2 over 50K) so these impact the average.”

Lieber says, “I’ve asked schools for specific numbers over the years, and it’s averaged out at about a 40% success rate. Those are good odds. You can’t win if you don’t play.”

What circumstances warrant an appeal and what do not?

Bianchi says, “I am of the mind that there is never a ‘bad appeal’ so I recommend that if a family can’t pay their parent contribution, they should appeal. The worst that will happen is they will get some great counseling on financing options to make the opportunity possible and then families ultimately make the decision that is best for them.” She adds, “With that said, it’s important to note that colleges are not responsible for funding discretionary things like luxury cars, vacations, real estate outside the primary home, etc…”

Lieber advises, “You should be clear both on the type of offer you got and to whom you’re making the ask before you sort out numbers. Are you appealing your need-based financial aid award, because you can’t afford to pay what they think you can? That goes to the financial aid office. Or are you appealing the merit aid award, because you think you’re far enough above average for that school’s admitted student pool that you deserve a bigger merit scholarship?” He explains “With need-based aid, there are a few circumstances that warrant an appeal. If you filled out the school’s net price calculator (NPC) and your award is lower than what the NPC estimated, then that’s a good ground for an appeal. Or, if your family’s circumstances have changed, then that warrants a review of your file too.” He adds, “With merit, it’s trickier. A school’s common data set can give you a sense of a recent year’s first-year class’s statistics around GPA and test scores. It can also tell you the percentage of people with no demonstrated financial need who have gotten merit money in recent years and how much–look for section H2A to find that. But what you can’t know is how ‘well’ a school is doing in that particular season in getting people to come–dynamics in the marketplace can shift as quickly as the economy and fickle teenagers’ minds–in any given year, a school may need to shift it’s merit/discounting strategy more than a little even within that season. You can’t know what is going on behind the scenes. But you can ask for more, and you have nothing to lose by doing so.”

Are appeals more common with need-based aid or merit awards?

Kopp explains, “With merit awards, they end up in the hands of our admission team, as merit awards are always considered ‘need-blind.’ They’ll typically ask for updated grades and/or test scores to take a second look.” He adds, “On the need-based side, the easiest appeals occur when a family’s more recently filed tax returns are less than the ‘prior-prior year’ numbers that were used to complete the FAFSA/PROFILE. Once we have the most recent returns, it’s a very easy change and re-packaging process. We’ll also take a look at things like medical expenses, or income reductions that are happening in the current calendar year.”

Bianchi agrees, saying “Need-based appeals are likely more common as the ‘facts”’ are often more black and white. Most offices that have merit-based scholarships have some sort of appeal mechanism within their admissions process. Merit appeals are typically not handled in a financial aid context.”

Lieber explains, “There is no good data on this, and in many instances, there is not much distance between the two, at least in families’ minds. A school may not be able to ‘afford’ to meet full need from the need-based financial aid side and families may define ‘need’ differently than the school–but merit aid may be generous enough to both make the school ‘feel’ affordable and also make families feel amazing about having been awarded a ‘presidential’ scholarship (that is in fact a coupon, more or less–or at least isn’t coming out of some presidential budget somewhere).”

Carpenter says, “It is more common to appeal for need-based aid, but merit aid is a close second (aside from colleges that don’t offer scholarships).” He adds, “The ‘type’ of college that considers appeals more than any other are private colleges that use the Federal Methodology (FM) when calculating need-based aid.”

Can you leverage packages offered by other colleges?

Kopp explains, “I have worked at a total of three different private schools, and Franklin & Marshall is the only one that does not consider the aid being offered by other institutions. This is likely due to the fact that we meet full need, and my previous two employers did not.”

Carpenter adds, “Some colleges will be explicit that they do not consider other offers (we’ve found exceptions even at these colleges), while other colleges have a specific process in which they welcome you to share other offers.”

Lieber recommends that families only leverage “offers from other schools that your target school actually competes with. It can be hard to know this for sure, but they should reject roughly the same percentage of applicants and have similar GPA/test score profiles– and it helps if they are the same size, in the same region, maybe even the same athletic conference–that gives you some hints.” He emphasizes, “if you do this, be humble. Something like this can help the ask go down easier: ‘Given the differences between the two quoted prices, I just wanted to make sure that I (the “I” being the student) didn’t do anything wrong here in presenting my application to you. Here are the things I’ve accomplished since you last heard from me–is there anything else I can tell you about myself and what I would contribute to the school?’”

Salisbury adds, “You’re trying to find the best value, and you can say to the school. ‘Look, you’re asking us to pay $15,000 more a year than this other one, and that’s $60,000 over 4 years. Help me justify that price difference or help me get to a place where I can pull the trigger and come to your place.’”

Bianchi says, “It is not a bad idea to share various (better) offers of aid when appealing to another school if the family feels comfortable. It is not in an effort to get colleges to match the aid award, but rather to allow colleges to understand the components of the other award and ensure that all schools are operating under the same assumptions.” She adds, “In my experience, this has helped find errors or misunderstandings that have benefited students.”

Final thoughts

Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” As you have heard from our experts above, appealing college financial aid offers is acceptable, common, and advisable. Consider some of their parting reflections. College Aid Pro’s Carpenter says “Just like any other major investment you should never accept the first offer. Generally speaking, you lose nothing aside from some sweat equity.” He adds, “Even in that scenario there is a lot to be learned from the student perspective; advocating for yourself, creating leverage in a business transaction, standing your ground to get your worth, etc. Huge life lessons for an 18-year-old to participate in.” He advises, “Understand how your college does business. These are private businesses that run their businesses differently; do businesses as businesses is done. Understand that a merit-based appeal usually happens with the admissions office and should come from the student. A need-based appeal usually happens with the financial aid office and should come from the parent.”

Williams College’s Bianchi emphasizes, “Be kind and sincere. This time of year is stressful for both families and colleges and treating the staff who will be hearing your appeal with respect builds a rapport that may continue for years to come.” Tuition Fit’s Salisbury agrees, saying, “Financial aid office folks and the admissions folks, they deal with enough cases where somebody comes in and like, I’m going to win this battle with you mano a mano. So when they get a chance to have a conversation with somebody who we’re really trying to collaboratively solve something that’s actually wonderful for them.”

Bianchi also says, “Be clear about the amount you are asking for. ‘Anything will help’ is not actually helpful for an appeals committee.” Instead, say something like, “$4,000 would enable my family and me to confidently join the XX community.” Finally, she encourages, “Talk as a family about your comfort in borrowing for college. Many colleges will expect the student to consider their student loans before any additional gift aid is committed.”

Take your shots on goal and ground them in grace and gratitude. There is an art to appealing and it has the potential to make college more affordable and accessible.