## Why aid packages aren’t always final [00:00] All right. Well, we are going to get started. I am a minute late. Sorry for being a little bit late. Uh, today we're going to be talking about college financial aid, how it's not necessarily stuck in stone. Um, and you know, we will talk about kind of different ways to kind of think about negotiation, about leveraging things, right? Uh, but there are limitations to that. So, we'll talk about those things. Okay. Now, as we're starting out, if you can just go ahead, make sure to kind of put your students grade in the chat, just so I know who's here, kind of what what grades we're talking to. Uh, in our coaching families, in our discord, I did mention, right, 2026 students, you need to be here, right? Uh, you need to be coming to the trainings to understand exactly what's going on, right? for 2027 students, right? Those students, well, this tax year is the most important tax year for you. So, you should be thinking very carefully about what's going on with your taxes. Okay? So, again, today it's June 25th, right? We are live here uh on Zoom, right? It's just after 5:00 and we'll kind of get right started. Okay? So, really quickly, this is what we're going to be covering today, right? We're gonna do we're gonna talk about college financial aid, right? Getting it is great, but then now what? Right? Is that it? Right? The answer is most likely not. So, we'll kind of talk about kind of what that looks like. I also do have a special offer that I've been offering since last week, but I'm only giving it to the people that are here live. Obviously, they took time out of their day. I want to reward them a little bit. Okay. Now, for those of you that are meeting me for the first time, right, my name is Coach David, right? I'm a former law school and college admissions reader, right? Uh, and I used to be a former lawyer, right? Uh, now I am working in college admissions. I've been I've helped thousands of families get to their dream colleges and also get money along the way. Right? And I'm also ready to help your family save money. So, uh hopefully we can do that over the course of our different trainings. Okay. Now, one of the sections I always like to start off with is financial aid news, right? Uh I like to kind of bring up kind of new things that are happening uh in the world of financial aid, new things that are going on so that our families can fully understand what the situations look like, especially with uh all the things that are changing in today's modern world. Okay? But I talked about this kind of a couple weeks ago as well, but there have been proposed budget cuts. Okay? Um now there's different federal grants that are given out and are part of this proposed budget cuts, right? Uh but one of the ones that is the most important for a lot of lower-income families is the Pell Grant. Okay. Now, the the kind of budget that has been proposed uh is going to cut the ## What recent Pell Grant cuts mean for families [03:00] Pell Grant from around $7,000 to around $5,000, right? That's more than a 25% reduction, right? That's a lot of money that families need in order to go to college. Okay? Uh at a lot of state level schools, that is enough to cover, you know, $7,000 is enough to cover the tuition uh for that state level school. But with that being now cut, uh lower-income families are going to be hurting a little bit more, right? Uh there's also going to be cuts to federal loans, uh especially graduate programs, right? Uh which have been the lifeline for a lot of students to advance their education, right? Uh let's just take for instance a student that just graduated from college is headed to medical school, right? Again, let's say parents aren't in a position to pay. That's $125,000 a year that that student has to pay for medical school. They what are they going to do? Work part-time, right? Uh even if we're I mean well I mean if they had a skill set where they could work part-time and make $125,000 well that's a pretty good side hustle, right? Uh but they are proposing that they're going to cap the amount of federal loans that graduate students can take, right? But then the question becomes well how many students can now afford to go to graduate school, right? Uh now from a kind of more undergraduate look, right? Um colleges from public to private, right? Um in kind of interviews and a lot of them stayed anonymous while they were doing their interviews, right? uh they have stated that they are anticipating future cuts right now there there were two kind of large public research university officials that have stated that cuts to grant and aid will be difficult to avoid basically they're saying it's going to happen right um there are even some colleges out there that have stated that current aid package that packages that were given to students might be cut okay so they give you $20,000 but around when school is starting they're going to say sorry we can only give you 13 right um the world of financial aid is kind kind of like upside down right now with all the cuts in the kind of federal budget, uh the cuts in the Department of Education, right? No one really knows where things are going. So, colleges are a little bit more scared, right? Uh they're a little bit uh playing their cards closer to the best, right? They're trying to hold on to their cash reserves. So, this all these different things that have to do with money unfortunately affect the money situation that that each family is going to be getting, right, for their financial aid. Okay. Now again, I'll try to keep you guys as, you know, as up to date uh with what's going on um every every kind of week, right? Um but if there are certain things that you're worried about, please reach out to us to make sure that we are taking a good clear look at what's happening. Okay? Now, one of the things I would say is don't get scared, get prepared. Right? Again, I've heard it all. My family makes a little too much money, right? We own our home, we have a business, rental properties, whatever it is, right? There's a lot of different reasons why people think that they are not going to get anything from financial aid, but I'm here to tell you that more families than not can get something, right? Um, doesn't matter if you make half a million a year or $50,000 a year or 0 a year, right? Um, there are more opportunities than you realize to get financial aid. Right now, before we get into the training, right, I want to give ## Full breakdown of Stanford’s cost of attendance and award example [06:00] a quick message. This is the same message that I give every week, but there are some things that have changed. Right? So, for those of you guys that don't know, Financial Aid Secrets is part of Eagle. Eagle lock is our parent company. Okay. Now, one of the things that we've been doing this summer is our kind of college application intensive. Now, one of the things that you'll see is that I crossed out Kickstart, right? We don't have any more space available, right? I don't know if you guys remember what I told you guys last week, but in order to come to our accelerator, you need to go through Kickstart. So, why am I still talking about it, right? Well, I'm talking about it because there's a couple like new programs that we have that can help your student through this process. We're currently working on a kind of like uh a kind of self-paced uh kickstart that you can go through, right? Uh we also have different programs where we can help your student from now until the end of application season to make sure that they're on track, make sure that they're making it through the process. Okay? So I will have a link for you at the end of our training uh so that you can get more information about that um and then you can book a call with one of our adviserss. Okay. So uh let's get into the training today. Right. We're talking about college financial aid kind of like the negoti negoti what's the word I'm looking for? The negotiatability I guess. Right? Uh how easy is it to negotiate and like can you leverage other awards that you've gotten? Right? So, the first thing that we need to do is look at what college costs look like, right? I know I went over very briefly like last week the cost like of college and the hidden cost. But let's take a look at the breakdown of the total cost, right? So, I'm going to be looking at Stanford, right? It's close to me. It's really expensive. So, that's why I want that I decided to choose that school, right? We're going to take a look at the cost, right? What the aid looks like and then talk about strategies we can use to get more. Okay? So, the first thing that we need to figure out is, okay, how much does it cost? Right? So around $68,000 for tuition, another $22,000 for housing and food, student fees around 2500, so on and so forth, yada yada yada, right? It's about $96,513 plus transportation costs, right? Depending on where you're coming from, it could be anywhere from a couple hundred, right? It could be a couple thousand roughly. Let's just call it $100,000, right? That is what we're going to be spending for our student to go to this school. Okay? Now, let's take a look at a financial aid award. Right? Now, it's a little hard to read on the right, so I'm going to take I I kind of transposed it over to the left. Right here are the things that were given. They gave us Stanford's fund scholarship for $61,87, right? They had outside scholarships for $2,500. Now, one of the things that I have always stated, right, is that outside scholarships are counted as financial aid, right? Your your school, if you're going there and they were going to give you $10,000 and you got 2500 on your own, right? they will only now give you 7500. So this student that got this outside scholarship, good for them. But the problem with this is that from the Stanford fund scholarship, they were probably going to give you somewhere in the r realm of like $2,400, right? But you got 2500 or not, sorry, ## Why outside scholarships can backfire [09:00] they were going to give you about $64,000, but you got 2500 on your own. That's why they they probably reduced your Stanford fund scholarship to 6187. Okay. So outside scholarships, yes, they sound really good. The question is should you accept them or not? Okay, they also have loans and work study. Okay, so like again loans and work study like again that's not free money. You have to work for it or you have to pay it back, right? So it doesn't really you're not really getting anything, right? And again the work study it just means that you have the ability to work. Doesn't mean that they're just giving you money and then you work it off. Okay, a lot of people misunderstand that about work study. It's like, oh yeah, we're going to give you the money first, then you just work off the balance of whatever you have to do. That's not how it works, unfortunately. Okay. Uh it it basically means that you are authorized to get a campus job, right? They will pay you and then you can work up to that amount. But usually if you're working and you're doing good in your job, they'll just keep you on and keep paying you. Now with cuts to the federal kind of budget, right? Especially with education work study, it might not it's not going to disappear, right? But the way that it is funded is going to change, right? So roughly before it was about 70% federal money, 30% money from the college. If they were paying you $10 an hour, and I I know that's like lower than minimum wage, but let's say they were paying you $10 an hour, right? Then $77 of that would be paid by the by the federal government, $3 of that would have been paid by the college. Now, with the proposed budget, that's actually going to flip. So, what they're saying is that colleges, you need to start doing out more money, right? Um, so now it's now they're thinking about switching that. Now, what that means for the availability of on-ampus jobs, I'm not 100% sure, but we'll kind of see what happens when the proposed budget either is accepted or not accepted and kind of figure it out from there. Okay. Now, looking at this, right, again, the scholarship fund, right? Um 61,807, that's the only free money that we were given. The $2,500 outside scholarship, you did something for that. You applied to it. You wrote essays. You had an interview. Whatever it is right now, that's not a bad offer, right? If you really think about it, right? It's 60% off, over 60% off, right? But you have to think about what at the end of the day is coming out of your pocket at like each and every semester, right? Now, again, roughly 60,000 off, right? The total cost is around 100, right? That means that it's $40,000 a year. That's a 20k check that you have to write each semester. Now, I don't know any parent that would be happy writing a 20k check. Yes, of course, if it's Stanford, we might be a little happier to write it, but it still stings when you have to write that check. Okay, so what what we're going to talk about now is what can you do about it, right? Because again, that's something important, right? Now, I always say this, right? When it comes to kind of financial aid, the crying baby gets more milk. If you whine and you constantly, you know, like send them an email saying, "Hey, I need this. Hey, I need this. Hey, I need this." Right? That's the that's the baby that gets the the the the kind of extra bottle. Okay. So, the first thing that I ## How to appeal aid when your situation has changed [12:00] tell families is ask for more. Right now, whenever I say, "Yeah, let's go ahead and ask for more." Right? Like especially like in April, right? Um in in March and April when decisions are coming out, right? Um and I always get this question, right? Well, what if they don't like that I'm asking for more? Like, what if they do something to my admissions decision because I'm asking for more financial aid? That's not going to happen. Okay, you have to remember the admissions process once you get your acceptance letter, it's done. The only reason they're cutting you is because, well, you fail a bunch of classes or you lied on your application, whatever the situation is, right? Unless there is a flagrant misrepresentation of the student that you are, then you should be fine. Okay? Just because you're asking for more money does not mean they're going to do anything to your admissions decision. Okay? The process is done, right? Asking for more doesn't change your admissions decision. It might change your financial situation though, right? And I see a lot of people like, I don't want to get anyone's bad side or this or that. I don't want to get in trouble with the financial aid office. There's no trouble to get into, right? Again, one of the things you need to remember is that the financial aid office does not see you as a person. Yes, they categorize and they they file your financial aid based on your name, but literally to them, you're just a formula in numbers. Okay? So, no one's feelings are going to get hurt. Okay? So ask and you may receive, right? So again, the one thing I want you to take away from here is if you don't ask, you'll never know. Okay? So keep that in mind there. You can always ask for more. What's the worst they can say? No. Okay. Now, another thing that has come up more recently is that I have a lot of students, right? Uh we did financial aid year one for them, right? They got a good aid package, but we're moving into year two, but something has changed in their family situation, right? Again, parents might get laid off, right? There might have been a divorce or separation. Maybe there's additional family members that you're taking care of, right? Grandma moved in, right? Um your cousins moved in. Whatever the situation is, right? The students going from part-time to full-time, right? There's a lot of other situations that can be happening. So, again, if you are going through a situation and you're unsure of of how it's going to kind of affect you, please go ahead and reach out to me so that I can discuss the situation and tell you what I think it will happen in your situation. Okay. Now, the reason why these things might change your financial aid situation is that well, you when they do your financial aid, they look at the the tax return from 2 years ago. A lot of things have happened since that time. Okay? So, let's just think about the class of 2026. They're going to be using your 2024 tax return. We are six months removed from the end of the year. A lot of stuff can happen in six months. And by the time you turn in your financial aid, right, which is well, even four not four months from now, right? In 10 months, a lot of things could have happened, right? You might have had, you know, a position, but then maybe in 2025 in January, uh maybe you got laid off from your position, right? ## What counts as a valid reason to ask for more [15:00] There was a huge decrease in your family's income, right? So you need to remember that things that happen to you after you file that particular year taxes which is the two-year like the the tax return from two years before your student's graduating right then you do need to kind of think okay well if something happens here or so if something happened here how is that going to affect my situation again if it's more complicated sign up for a consultation I will have a link at the at the end of our our training here so that you can kind of talk to me and we can see what the situation looks like for you okay But again, your tax returns from 2 years ago, they don't tell us about what's happening right now. Okay? So, make sure that if there are things that are happening right now, let's say that um you know, you are you have added another dependent, grandma, and grandma's sick and there's you know, huge medical expenses and this and that, so on and so forth. Those are things you want to tell the school about. The problem with that is that realistically, you're not going to be able to tell them about that because you're not going to be able to turn in your 2025 tax return until the following year. Okay? So again, remember what is on the tax return you turn into the school and what is your present situation may be very different. If that's the case, then it's something that we should tell the financial aid office about. Okay. Now, the other question I always get is like, oh, which colleges can we kind of ask for more at? right? Or where can we negotiate? So on and so forth, right? And so here is the thing, right? Negotiations happen all the time. Leveraging happens all the time. But you need to be comparing apples, right, to apples and oranges to oranges, right? There are some schools uh that there there only some schools will care about awards from other colleges, right? Now, a lot of our families are from California. So unfortunately, I have some bad news for you. The UC's and CSUs do not care how much money you got from another school because if you're going to your home state school, they know that for almost almost I'd probably say 95% of the time, they are the most ## Which schools negotiate and which ones never do [17:00] costefficient option. Okay? There will usually never be a more costefficient option, right? Whatever income bracket that you're in, right? Uh so keep that in mind there. The state schools, whatever state you're in, right? They don't care about, oh, well, you got into Yale and they give you $60,000. Well, it still costs more than going to our school, right? So, keep that in mind, right? You need to compare like schools. So, let me give you some examples here. Okay? So, UC Berkeley will never care that you got an offer from Stanford. Again, why? Well, at the end of the day, there's a very low chance that Stanford will ever be cheaper than going to Berkeley, whatever income category you're in, right? At the same time, a state school and a private school, it is not comparing apples to apples. Okay. Now, another situation where you have to make sure you're looking at a good comparison is that Stanford will also never care about an offer from George Washington, right? The student profile that they're choosing at George Washington versus Stanford are going to be very different. Okay? So, if you say, "Hey, Stanford, George Washington gave me 70 grand." Right? Stanford's going to say, "Good for you." Right? Because again, they don't see it as a rival or competitor. Okay? But right here are situations where it might kind of sway them a little bit, right? And again, I used high kind of like highle schools because again, I want you guys to understand, right? But MIT, well, yeah, they might care about a better offer letter from Stanford, right? So, if if MIT comes back with 50 and Stanford comes back with 60 and you call MIT and you say, "Hey, is there is there anything more we can squeeze out?" Stanford's offer offering me another $10,000 a year, right? MIT might be might say, "All right, and more likely will say, "Give me give me a couple days. Let me see what I can do." Okay. Now, Carnegie Melon Melon, right, might care about an offer from Caltech again. Well, if it's a higher ranked school, right, and they gave you more money, well, Carnegie Melon's like, "Oh, what did we miss?" Right? Uh, is there something else we can do for this student, right? And then again, when they're very comparable, right? Duke might care about an offer from Rice, right? They're very comparable schools, right? Ranked very kind of well. Uh, because a lot of our students are in the engineering fields, I chose schools that have, you know, engineering, computer science where they're kind of very, very, very elite schools. Okay. Um, so again, Duke might care about Rice, but if you say, "Oh, well, like UC Berkeley is really highly ranked in engineering and you know, so is this school and so is that school." It's like, yeah, but again, the comparison that doesn't work is that Berkeley is a state school and then this school is a private school. Okay? And then you might be like, okay, well, I'll compare states I I'll compare state schools together. Again, UC Berkeley and UCLA, the problem with trying to compare and leverage them is that their offers are almost exactly the same. it might differ by I don't know five to eight% right so if you're if you're calling Berkeley and saying hey ## Real examples of successful appeal outcomes [20:00] can I get an extra $33 it might not necessarily work right because again cost of living is different in Berkeley than in than at LA so on and so forth okay but so again make sure that you're kind of looking at you know like for like colleges okay now quick takeaways here are that you can always do something right now I understand these situations that I have kind of told you guys about, they're limited, right? But there's always that there's always something that you can do to even get another dollar. Right now, I've been able to help families, you know, consistently get like an extra 5 10k either just by asking or by using, you know, leverage from, you know, other kind of similar schools, right? Um and so, right, I don't want you to give up, right? Um the only situations where I tell families, hey, you need to give up is well, when I look at the income situation and the particular school they're going to, and I'm like, they're not going to give you anything. Don't don't don't like waste your time, right? But I do say make sure to exhaust all your resources before looking at things. And then the final piece I want to, and it was a smaller piece for today, but I do want to make sure that you understand outside scholarships. If you have not seen my training, I think it was about 3 weeks ago now about outside scholarships and finding the right scholarships for you, right? Make sure to watch that because one of the things I talk about is scholarship displacement, right? And that's and if your family is considered nonlowinccome, right, they will not allow you to stack your outside scholarships on top of the scholarships that the school or the federal government or the or the state government is giving to you. So keep that in mind there. Okay, now really quickly, I like to brag a little bit all the time, right? Um, but again, we've been able to have some great results for our families, right? We were able to save this family that makes $350,000 a year, uh, 30,000, 35,000, 37,000 from various different private schools. Okay, again, they thought they were going to save zero, right? This family, they make $440,000 a year. We were able to get them $42,000 a ## When families earning over 400K still got money [22:00] year from Baylor. Okay, and then this family, they made right around 230. We were able to save them right around $30,000 a year, right, in financial aid from a UC. Okay. So, I do want to make sure that our families that are here today, right, you get that special discount, right? So, what we'll do real quickly, we'll pause the recording, right? Um, I'll explain the discount and then we will go back to like kind of Q&A, right? But if you guys are interested in talking to me about talking to me about financial aid, if you're class of 2025 or not 25, 26, 27, 28, you should be talking to me now. Right now, a lot of families might be saying, "Well, my kid is like a freshman going into sophomore year. Why do I talk to you now?" Well, just like anything else in this world, our prices are increasing, right? Just like with everything else. Okay? And because of that, I tell families, well, if you can lock in your price now, you're like saving yourself money. Okay? So the earlier you sign up, the lower the costs are going to be because well, hey, you don't have to worry about what what the cost of our program is going to be in 2 3 4 years. Okay? Uh but if you do want to talk to us, you can use the QR code there or you can text money to 949775865 if you are interested in our kind of college admissions programs. Right? Again, if your if your student is a class of 2026, hasn't really started with anything. Well, we're kind of in a little bit of a pickle because all of our seniors have started on their applications and their essays. Okay. So, make sure to text college uh to 949775865 or use that QR code on the right. Okay. Uh real quickly, we're going to go kind of uh off recording uh to make sure that we uh you know have more people live next time, right? Um and for those that are watching the recording, right? again try to be here at 5:00 on Wednesdays. You guys can take part in our kind of special discounts as well. Okay. All right. So, we are back uh from the special discount that I'm offering the people that are here today. Right. I did want to open it up for kind of Q&A, right? If anyone has any questions about ## What to do now if you’re a 2026, 2027, or 2028 family [24:00] anything about the process, about financial aid, right? About our coaching programs, anything and everything, I am open to answering. Right? For those of you guys that didn't know, I'm also one of the head coaches in the coaching program, right? So, I also do work with students. Um, but financial aid is another section that I also kind of another kind of piece of the of the company that I do work in. Okay. So, I'll give you guys a couple seconds. If you guys do have questions, put them in the Q&A, put them in the chat. I will make sure to answer them. All right, we have a question here in the Q&A and it says, "Is there an income limit to getting financial aid?" So, usually I say no, right? But, uh, because I've seen, you know, families with higher level incomes nowadays, right? Uh, I do say if you're making over, you know, a million dollars a year, I can't help you, right? Unfortunately, right, any college you go to is going to be full price, right? Um so um you know you know it you you can't expect to get anything right now. Let's say that your student is a star baseball player, star football player, star volleyball player, then yes, there might be other other kind of athletic awards or things that you might be able to get, but nothing from need-based financial aid. Okay, but if you're kind of under that level, right, then yes, I should be able to help. Okay. All right. Well, I don't see any other questions here, right? Uh so again, thank you guys for joining me today. Um you know, in in any way that you guys, you in with any questions that you guys have, right? If you're a coaching family, reach out to us in Discord, right? If you're if you're in our Facebook group, uh you know, my my face is right there. Just go ahead and click on it and click message. You can send me a message, okay? Um you can also send me an email, right? Um so whatever works for you guys, send it on over so we can help you understand your situation and so we can tell you if we can help or not, right? There's a lot of families that we turn away because it's like, you know what, in your situation, well, you don't really need us. You can do it on your own. This is how much you're going to get, right? Um, but a lot of our families are in very complicated situations, right? Um, where their income might not truly reflect kind of like the cash flow that they have or, you know, their assets are really high, but that's because there was an inheritance or this or that, so on and so forth, right? There's a lot of different situations that I've dealt with over the past 15 years, 16 years, right? Um, but I'm pretty sure I probably dealt with the situation that you're in. Okay? So, make sure to reach out to us. Uh, again, I'll leave the QR code up real quick. Uh, so that you guys can take a picture, uh, or you guys can text us, right? And then if you there are any more specific questions, make sure to sign up for a consultation so we can talk, right? Our consultations are always free. We do not charge, right? Uh, and at the end of the day, at least you can get some of your questions answered. Okay? So, I'll leave this up for a couple a couple minutes here. Uh, if you guys do have any other questions, make sure to reach out and we'll talk to you again next week. Okay. All right, everyone. Have a great night. Bye-bye.