Getting an Extra $30,000 Scholarship from Rutgers

I heard today from a dad named John, who got Rutgers to quadruple the academic scholarship that it is offering his daughter.

After hearing from John, Rutgers scotched the original $10,000 scholarship and replaced it with a $40,000 college scholarship instead.

How did he do it? It was simple.

On February 17, John sent an email to Rutger’s undergraduate admissions department that politely asked that the staff to reexamine the scholarship amount. Yesterday, he received a four-line email from an associate vice president at Rutgers that contained the fantastic news about the $40,000 scholarship.

“It was a huge surprise and good for RU and good for us that it worked,” John told me.

Many families assume that you can’t negotiate for a better financial aid package or merit scholarship from a college, but that’s not true. John said he learned that he could appeal after reading pages 34-37 in my book, The College Solution. (Hey, this looks like a shameless plug, but this is what he told me right down to the page numbers.)

Your chances of getting a fatter academic scholarship or financial aid award is greater if  the university really wants your child. In this case, it looks like Rutgers might not have seen the teenager’s ACT score (32 out of a possible 36), which was excellent and instead used solid, but not phenomenal SAT scores. In this case, John only had to bring this to the attention of the admission office to get more money.

Not every request for a heftier college scholarship ends so wonderfully, but often  it is worth a try.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

Read more:

How to Negotiate for a Better Financial Aid Package


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  1. There seems to be some grants, Months ago when I heard about this, there was something unique about it that caught my attention, so I decided to look into it further. This unique aspect that caught my attention was” Government Backed, Private Grants”. This means that the funds given as Grants were from private sources which are from businesses of all types and sizes, and the Government then gives these businesses the maximum allowable tax breaks with a few other perks as well.

    In a nut shell, that’s what our first solution consists of, however this is not the usual type of Grant, so it has huge promise to so many people. Let me put it this way; the incentive to these businesses and corporations is to save a lot of money and more than any other previous method. Also, unless the Grants have been verified as given to the grantor, they will not receive any benefits.

  2. It’s often a good idea to negotiate things, including scholarships.

    I’ve known students who were very good athletes who were able to get a better deal from their institutions of choice.