Clear
76
95
76
Today
95
76
Tuesday
98
78
Wednesday
97
77
Latest Weathercast
Now
76
Tue
98
Wed
97
High temps Monday through Wednesday soar well into the 90s with heat index values over 100.
Melanie Hastings
TOPICS:
WASHINGTON (7News) — As your high school senior heads off to college this fall, ever-increasing tuition costs will be weighing on many family budgets.
Your child may have accepted a financial aid offer in the form of a grant or scholarship — But those offers are not always final. Even if your child has accepted an offer from a college, you can still negotiate for more financial aid.
You will need to have a very good reason and the documents to prove it.
College-bound students have known since May 1 which school they will be attending this fall. That is also when they found out how much financial aid they may be eligible to receive. But those offers are not written in stone. Sometimes schools find they have more flexibility than the amount they first offered.
If you are looking for more financial aid, you can apply for more financial help, but time is of the essence.
SEE ALSO | Recent grads find opportunity in 'second-tier cities'
"The first step is to first figure out how you're going to rationalize why you need more funds," said Jennifer Finetti, Director of Student Advocacy at Scholarship Owl.
This could be due to unusually high medical bills or a recent job loss. You will need to document the change in need and write a short letter describing how your circumstances have changed. Then you want to follow through as quickly as possible and send in that information. Sometimes, a competing offer from another school can be a great negotiating tool.
"Sometimes what you can do is you can say, this other school offered me X amount, and that's more than what you're offering me. Now there's no guarantee that they will give you more, but if you don't ask, you'll never know," Finetti said.
Scholarships can run from a couple of hundred dollars up to thousands of dollars. Private institutions typically have more money to give and more flexibility in awarding funds.
Students who are the most proactive in applying are the ones who typically win these scholarship dollars.