As obsequiousness has become the norm, schools that overlook candidates after they have been accepted tend to lose them. Karen Zweig, mother of a junior at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, describes how her son had been hoping to attend a wellregarded private university in Atlanta until he took a closer look at his pool of acceptances.
While Tufts wooed him, the Atlanta school from which he had been most pleased to receive an acceptance letter now seemed to view him as just another student. While the environmentalist in me mourns the waste of paper and ink, schools should be fawning over your college-bound child. He or she is special, and the attention is most deserved.
Money is another way a college can show it cares about your son or daughter. Smart schools may seek to match or best a financial aid grant that has been offered by another admissions office to woo your child to attend their college, though I have yet to find an admissions officer willing to be quoted in print as having made such an offer.
Just because a school does not offer to up their financial aid package doesn’t mean you can’t ask them to. Once your child has that admissions letter, he or she is in the driver’s seat and anything that saves you both on tuition is hardearned money saved.
