How to compare college financial aid offers

The single most important rule: compare net cost, not sticker price. The published “cost of attendance” is almost never what a family actually pays. What matters is your net cost — the price after grants and scholarships — and that can differ by tens of thousands of dollars between two schools with identical sticker prices.

Read the aid letter carefully

Award letters mix two very different things, and schools don't always make the difference obvious:

• Grants and scholarships — free money you don't repay. This is what actually lowers your cost.
• Loans and work-study — money you repay or earn. These are not discounts; a “$20,000 package” that's mostly loans barely helps your net cost.

To find your real net cost: take the full cost of attendance (tuition, fees, housing, food, books, travel) and subtract only the grants and scholarships — never the loans.

Compare apples to apples

Two traps to avoid. First, some letters quote only tuition, others the full cost of attendance — always compare the same all-in number. Second, check whether scholarships are renewable for all four years or just the first, and what GPA they require to keep. A big first-year award that vanishes sophomore year isn't the deal it looks like.

You can ask for more

An aid offer isn't always final. If a school is your clear first choice but another gave you a better package, many financial-aid offices will consider an appeal — especially if your family's circumstances changed or you have a stronger competing offer to point to. It's a polite request, not a demand, and it's more common than families think.

How CampusMatch helps

CampusMatch Decision lets you enter your actual aid offers per school and scores each on your real net cost — not the sticker — then ranks your options with cost sitting side by side with academics, career outcomes, and campus fit. So the choice reflects what you'd truly pay, weighted against everything else that matters.