Previously, we posted an article titled, “Tuition Discounts Offered as Merit Aid” regarding the practice by colleges of awarding partial merit scholarships to qualified applicants (also called discounted tuition). There are two reasons why this practice has become routine:
- Colleges need to enroll a number of high-achieving students each year to maintain or improve their academic reputation, and
- Many colleges are experiencing declining enrollment, so they use partial merit scholarships to entice more students to enroll in their school.
We advise students to study the Common Data Set (CDS) before selecting the schools to which they’ll apply. The CDS initiative is a collaborative effort among data providers in the higher education community and publishers as represented by the College Board, Peterson’s, and U.S. News & World Report. The goal of this collaboration is to improve the quality and accuracy of information provided to all involved in a student’s transition to college as well as to reduce the reporting burden on data providers. The CDS enables students to identify the colleges that are most inclined to discount tuition by offering partial merit scholarships. These colleges can then be favored in the fall when students are identifying best-fit schools.
After May 1 of every admissions season, many students need to compare the financial aid packages in the Award Letters of the colleges that have admitted them. TuitionFit is a free tool that facilitates this comparison. It enables students who have been admitted to colleges to find out how much those schools have been discounting tuition for similarly qualified applicants with similar financial profiles.
A Common Problem of Applicants
Students who apply to college in the Early Admissions cycle and are accepted receive Award Letters in January and February. Regular Admissions applicants who applied in January receive their Award Letters in March and April. Award Letters state the financial aid that is available to an admitted student. Many students receive multiple Award Letters from colleges and need to compare them in a systematic way to rank their overall fitness.
Students are at a disadvantage when they compare Award Letters because they ordinarily have no basis for evaluating if a college’s merit scholarship offer is fair to them. A student doesn’t know if they have received a smaller award than other applicants with similar academic records and financial circumstances. Knowing this helps a student to make the best choice among the colleges that have admitted them. This knowledge can also provide leverage if a student chooses to appeal a college’s financial aid award.
What’s a Fair Offer?
TuitionFit is an online platform that enables a student to compare the financial aid package, including any merit scholarship award, that he or she received from a college against the aid packages awarded to other students. In return, students use a secure portal to upload to TuitionFit one or more Award Letters that they have received from colleges. TuitionFit pools financial aid data to create a database of actual net price information. TuitionFit has been reviewed favorably by the New York Times, Forbes, Money, Education Week, and CNBC.
Students set up an account with TuitionFit and send them personal information such as test scores and GPA. They also upload a summary of their financial circumstances in the form of the Student Aid Index (SAI) that was determined through the FAFSA process, which is the amount of their student’s college costs that a family is expected to pay yearly.
TuitionFit scrubs all personal information and organizes Award Letters to according to generic student profiles and Award Letters by college. The result is a source of actual net price information. Students who share their Award Letter(s) with TuitionFit will be provided with the actual financial aid information that was offered to other students.
A drawback of the TuitionFit methodology is that students can only see price information from Award Letters that have been uploaded by other students. This may not include all of the colleges that interest them.
A college will not rescind an offer of admission if they become aware that an admittee uploaded their Award Letter to TuitionFit. They know they would create an PR problem if they rescind an admissions offer to a student for simply trying to find a good financial fit.
Using CDS data together with TuitionFit will generate a more accurate projection of the actual net COA that an admittee will pay than the Net Price Calculator (NPC) that a college provides on its website. NPC’s tend to include a number of unstated assumptions.
How Students Use the Information
Students use TuitionFit to compare the net price that they are being asked to pay to the net price offered to similar applicants. They can do this for every college to which they have been admitted. Armed with this information, a student may opt to try to work with an admissions office to obtain a lower net price than the one offered in the Award Letter. Requesting a better price from a college is acceptable behavior. There’s no downside if it is presented as a request and not as a negotiation. It doesn’t hurt to ask.
In searching the TuitionFit database, a student may find attractive colleges that are offering a net price that they find budget-friendly relative to the value of the school. They may wish to apply to them even if it’s past the deadline for applications. Although they don’t publicize it, many colleges are open to receiving applications as late as June if they’re still trying to enroll a sufficient number of qualified freshmen to fill all open seats.
The Value of TuitionFit to Juniors
The CDS enables students to identify the colleges that are most inclined to offer discounted tuition to high-achieving applicants. However, time must be devoted to CDS research when it is most precious— first semester senior year. It would be ideal if juniors and rising seniors could have ready access to net price information before they submit applications. The problem is that these students don’t have Award Letters to contribute.. However, TuitionFit has a solution. It enables these students to see net prices from all colleges from which TuitionFit has received Award Letters in the past two years. A student can filter the list by their target tuition range and best-fit factors.
The Benefits of Comparing Financial Offers
In the admissions cycle of 2024-25, three Boston-area private colleges, Boston College, Boston University, and Northeastern University, posted the following as the annual Cost of Attendance (COA) on their websites:
- Boston College – $88,632
- Boston University – $90,207
- Northeastern University – $96, 236
Middle- and lower-income students with excellent academic records, in considering these three institutions, may have decided that, based on the COA, they couldn’t afford to attend any of them, so they didn’t even bother to apply. However, according to data reported by those colleges to the U.S. Department of Education, the actual average price paid by enrollees at these colleges in fall of 2025 was as follows:
- Boston College – $26,567
- Boston University – $35,303
- Northeastern University – $45,775
So, for example, if a student didn’t apply to Boston College because the COA was too high, they would never have known that the effective net price dropped by $62,065 from the COA to the actual net cost of attendance.
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