How To Negotiate For More Financial Aid
WHEN THE FAT ENVELOPE ARRIVES laying out your school's financial aid package, it will most likely include a combination of aid types: one or more of the federally guaranteed loans, a work-study job, and a non-repayable grant from the government or the school's own resources. Chances are, one or more of the schools won't have offered you enough to cover your costs. Or you may get a package from one school that varies wildly from other offers. Or something will have changed in your financial picture that's going to make it tougher to pay the college bills. Whatever the specifics, chances are good that you can get more aid. Before you call the school's financial aid office, however, consider the following:

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Introduce New Information
Is there something about your financial situation that's not apparent from your forms? Has a parent lost a job or taken a pay cut? Has a family member become ill? Financial aid officers can, and most often will, take your new circumstances into consideration. Almost every college in the Midwest, for example, increased awards for the children of farmers and business people wiped out by the catastrophic 1993 floods.
 
Take the case of Merryl Newler, an advertising executive in upstate New York. In the winter of 1993, Newler filed financial aid applications for her daughter Jordana with both Brandeis and Bryant colleges. Around the time of the deadline, Newler lost her job. When she got the award letters in April, Newler found that neither school offered enough money under her new circumstances. She called both schools pleading her case and, happily, both reworked her package. Brandeis, her daughter's first choice, gave her $8,000 in grants. That and the original package, took care of $24,000 of the first year's $29,900 tab.
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Get a Step-by-Step Explanation
If you've suffered no extraordinary change in circumstances, try asking the aid officer to review how the college calculated your need. That way, as the two of you walk through how much he or she expects your family to contribute, you can explain any discrepancies between the way the school figured your portion and the way you calculated it.

Be sure to point out the specifics of your situation. When figuring home equity, for instance, the school may have overlooked the fact that the value of your family's home is less than the outstanding mortgage. Or an aid officer may have built cost-of-living increases into your salary that you know won't materialize.

Some financial aid officers will even take large consumer debts or IRS payments into account. Anna Sinnet, director of financial aid at DePauw University, recalls giving aid to one family that had racked up $30,000 in credit card debt. Although wary of rewarding people for living beyond their means, Sinnet didn't want to penalize the student who, after all, wasn't responsible for her parents' lifestyle. DePauw decreased the expected family contribution by $5,000.
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Be Nice
When you're negotiating, tread lightly. You don't want to antagonize the person who controls the purse strings. The goal is to strike up a good working relationship that will pay off now -- and in the future. Remember, college lasts (at least) four years, but financial aid doesn't. It's granted on a year-by-year basis, which means you'll have to go through the same tedious process each of the years your child is in school. And colleges have a well-known habit of offering freshmen the best packages, only to scale back later. A good rapport with your financial aid officer will help guard against those cutbacks or help you renegotiate if they do happen.
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Know Your Competition
This is especially helpful if you're trying to leverage one school's offer against another's. Financial aid officers note that some of the most competitive schools will automatically up their packages when they find out that an attractive student is threatening to go to a particular rival. Schools look at where students who turn them down end up going, then up the packages for students who've received better deals from those schools.

Take the case of Jennifer Hanlin. In the Spring of 1995, Hanlin was accepted to study architecture at Harvard and Yale; Harvard was her first choice. But her dream school came up with only $1,000 in aid, versus $3,000 from Yale. Rather than settling for her second choice, Hanlin called Harvard, telling the aid officer that she had a better offer from Yale (though she didn't tell them how much it was for). She ended her conversation by simply stating that she couldn't attend Harvard with only $1,000 in assistance. Harvard called back an hour later -- with an $11,000 total aid package.

Clearly, this strategy works best with schools like Harvard and Yale that compete fiercely. Try to find out if the schools your kid has chosen compete this way, and if so be sure to mention superior packages that may push a certain school's hot buttons. One way to find which schools are rivals is to search in The Princeton Review Student Access Guide to the Best 310 Colleges. This link will take you to The Princeton Review's Web site where you can search for the college of your choice and check out the section that lists where else the school's applicants most often apply. You can also purchase the Guide online. If your school isn't listed check with your high school guidance office. Experienced counselors often have a sense of which schools in their area are battling for the most attractive students.

Finally, when you're applying to schools ask the admissions officers for the names of the schools they compete with most for students. They aren't obligated to tell you, but some schools are quite open about it.
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