Sweetening The Pot: A Guide to Appealing Your Way to a Better Award Package
Learn how to get colleges to increase your student's financial aid award.
- Mistakes on the FAFSA can be corrected – Find and fix expensive errors
- The first award package sets the standard for all four years – The top 10 reasons to appeal
- Writing a winning appeal letter – Every appeal must include these four essential statements
- Improving the odds of success: What to do before you start
- Six critical mistakes that will cost you money and how to avoid them
Colleges hire enrollment managers and use sophisticated analytics to create each student's award package. Their purpose is to offer your child the least amount of money and still have them enroll. If you can’t afford the college this webinar will empower you to get your fair share.
The first award package sets the standard for all four years. Saving only a few thousand dollars per year adds up to $12,000. Sweetening The Pot: A Guide to Appealing Your Way to a Better Award Package can help you get the best price possible.
View the recording below:
Need proof?
-We were nervous about asking for more money, but it turned out our fears were unfounded and it all worked out great.
Parents of Butler University Student.
-The college first offered my son nothing. Then we used the techniques FAFSAssist gave us to appeal and got $20,000 per year. We saved $80,000 over four years!
Parents of a Lafayette College Student.
-FAFSAssist should be in every high school! We know the tools saved us thousands of dollars per year because we qualified for a grant after we used the appeal process.
Parents of Loyola Univ of Chicago Student.
Join Stuart Siegel, creator of FAFSAssist to learn how to persuade your child’s first choice colleges to increase their offer of financial assistance. Or as the colleges say, ‘sweeten the pot’.
Presenter Stuart Siegel
Stuart Siegel is the founder of College Tuition Solutions, Inc. He has specialized in college financial aid for 25 years. His firm has managed the financial aid process for over 106,000 students by filing the FAFSA, CSS Profile and institutional forms; finding colleges that can be used to leverage better award packages through negotiation and appeal, and assisting parents using the federal loan program to their best advantage.
In 1996, with three bright children to educate, Stuart immediately focused his fledgling financial practice on college funding and soon after became an innovator and one of the leaders of a cottage industry.
Most notably, he gained national recognition amongst professional college consultants for his work appealing college financial aid decisions. He has often presented his ideas on college funding and financial aid to groups such the Pennsylvania Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, College Advisors Group, the National Institute of Certified College Planners, and the National College Advocacy Group (where he serves on the board), colleges and many high schools in the Northeastern United States.
For the past 12 years he has served as Director of College Family Care for Collegiate Funding Solutions; with clients that include the Pentagon, NASA, and Boeing Corporation federal credits unions.
Stuart holds the distinction of being one of few college funding specialists in the country invited to meet with parents privately in the financial aid offices of institutions such as: Clark University, Mass; Alfred University, N.Y.; Fairleigh Dickinson University, N.J. among others.
Due to increasing demand for his services among college funding specialists, CPA and law firms, prestigious financial advising, and insurance companies, he established the College Family Care Center in 2000.
In 2003, to meet the challenges of ever-changing financial aid requirements and as college costs continued to skyrocket, Stuart developed software to effortlessly manage each student’s financial aid journey and present solutions to afford even the most expensive colleges. First, it was the FAFSAsoft EZ File Financial Aid System for the professional college advisor released in 2013 and more recently, FAFSAssist, the turbotax-like home version exclusively for parents.
Mr. Siegel has been quoted in many magazines and newspapers including USA Today, US News and World Report, The Christian Science Monitor, and many others. He writes his own monthly newsletter, FAFSAssist, writes the occasional guest blog for colleagues and many of his articles can be found on LinkedIn.
Stuart supports community theater and keeps his hand in by performing in the occasional play and staged readings (he used to be a professional actor in the 1980s). Outdoor pursuits include skiing at Sun Valley and camping in the Sawtooth Mountains. He shares life with his best friend and wife, Sherri, a Geriatric Nurse Practitioner. They make their home in Boise, Idaho, and have three children; Rene, Chad, and Zoe, all of whom benefited from his work in financial aid.