This is our situation: my son has heard from a number of less competitive schools that have given him decent merit scholarships. He is still waiting to hear from the more competitive liberal arts schools that have huge endowments = better need based aid. I don't know if he'll receive any merit scholarships from the higher tier schools.
We just received an aid package from one of his top choices at a moderately competitive school and though he received their top scholarship (plus another one on top of that), the need based aid brought the whole package to significantly less than our EFC (which is still going to be very tough to meet, especially when we add in the annual cost increase of the school). We can't afford it as is - we were hoping to at least meet our EFC since he is a higher stats candidate (though they are not a 100% need met school).
My first instinct is to call today and see if they can meet our EFC, but I don't want to sound greedy (this is our first time going through the college applicant process). I also don't know if we should wait and see if he gets into the other schools, and what their aid packages are, so we have some actual numbers to tell them. One other thing - he is going to compete for a full tuition scholarship at the school in April, so there is another chance, though slim, of him getting more aid.
Any advice from someone who was successful in negotiating better aid?
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