Yale students' advice highlights aid-matching

A pair of Yale University activists is fighting for better financial aid - by telling students to apply to Princeton University.

Yale senior Phoebe Rounds and alumnus Peter Hasegawa recently called on high-school seniors at Phillips Exeter Academy and other top private schools to use aid offers from peer institutions - such as Princeton - to pressure Yale to up its aid.

"People who are able to leverage aid like I did got $15,000 to $20,000 more than they would have otherwise," Rounds said.

Rounds's and Hasegawa's crusade touches on an interesting part of the financial-aid debate - how Penn responds when a peer institutions offer better aid packages.

Associate Director of Financial Aid Mike Light said Penn reviews competing aid offers from other university, as long as they are need-based, and may match the offer.

"If we have another financial-aid package from another school, we'll take a look at it and try to figure out" how to proceed, he said.

"A lot of students maybe think that we automatically match," he added, "but that's not really the case."

But some Penn students claim that, in their experience, the University will often only match offers from Ivy League universities.

College freshman Lucia della Paolera said she asked Penn to review her financial-aid package after said she received better offers from Vassar College and Tufts University.

According to della Paolera, Penn would not increase its offer unless she presented a higher one from another Ivy League institution.

Wharton and College senior Sissi Chen said she used better aid offers from Princeton and Yale to successfully lobby Penn for an additional $10,000 in financial aid.

"The fact that I had [better offers from] Princeton and Yale - . I just leveraged that" to increase Penn's aid package, she said.

University officials did not respond to these claims despite repeated requests for comment.

College-admissions counselors say that it is common for schools to only consider matching aid packages from schools they view as competitors.

Schools are "more likely to match offers from schools that they see to be on equal footing," said Dan Blednick, an admissions counselor with the Manhattan-based firm Collegiate Consultants.

Michelle Hernandez, a former Dartmouth admissions officer who now runs her own college counseling firm, agreed, saying it's common for Ivies to increase aid if they feel a students will choose another Ivy League school.

"The top colleges are competitive, and they're competitive among their peers," she said.v

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