Appealing a financial aid package
About this video
If an aid package expects more than your family can afford, you can ask the financial aid office to review it. Call quickly, ask them to explain the offer, and share new or missing information such as uncovered healthcare costs, supporting relatives, or damage to your home.
You'll be able to
- explain how to ask a financial aid office to review my package.
- give examples of information that might lead a school to change a package.
- explain why it helps to ask for a review as early as possible.
Key words
- Commensurate
- Matching or in proportion to something, such as what your family can actually pay.
- Reevaluating
- Looking at something again to decide whether it should change.
- Out-of-pocket expenses
- Costs your family pays itself because insurance or a program doesn't cover them.
- FAFSA
- The federal form families fill in to apply for financial aid.
Transcript
- If you receive an aid package that is not commensurate with what your family is able to pay, maybe you've completed your entire financial aid application, and the financial aid office says that they're expecting more money than your family can afford, you are absolutely able to ask for a review of your package.
- Reevaluating a financial aid package is definitely an option for any student. The quicker you do it, the better, and what you want to do is be able to bring that offer, call the financial aid office and ask them to explain that offer. They can be very helpful to say, "This is why we came up with this package "and why we think it fits your family."
There are some schools that may say, "If you have other "need-based financial aid packages that are "similar to ours that are a little bit better, "send us those so we can see what they're evaluating." So schools are generally very willing to look at a package, and they may or may not change, but they're always, I think, willing to look at that.
The sooner you do it, the more funds they may have to make changes in that package. The reasons why they may make changes typically are based on information that they didn't have. So there may be new information or information that just wasn't included in the FAFSA, in the profile, so again, examples of that may be things like you have healthcare expenses that your healthcare program doesn't cover, and they're out-of-pocket expenses.
So if you can document those expenses, that could change your package significantly. If you have grandparents living with you in your house, and your parents are using funds to help support those folks, that may change your package. We had a situation a few years ago when I was doing college admission where a family's home was actually moved off of its foundation from a tornado, so our financial aid office asked that family to show them the three estimates they had to fix that problem, and they factored that in and changed their financial aid package knowing that they had to put X number of dollars toward fixing their home that was...
had to be done. So I think financial aid offices are willing to look at that, they may or may not change, but it can't hurt to ask. And again, the sooner you do that, the better, because they probably have more funds at that point.
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