Financial aid appeal guides

Something in your finances changed (special-circumstances appeal)

Goes to the financial aid office. The office can change the income, assets, or cost figures in your aid calculation on documented evidence.

• How to appeal financial aid after a job lossThe 2027-28 FAFSA and CSS Profile use 2025 income. If a parent lost a job after that, the forms cannot see it, and a special-circumstances appeal is the only way the school finds out. This is the case the appeal process was built for.
• How to appeal financial aid because of medical billsLarge out-of-pocket medical or dental costs can reduce the income the formula counts. The catch: the bills must be paid, not just billed, and they must exceed what the formula already assumes every family spends on health care.
• How to appeal financial aid after a divorce or separationIf parents separated or divorced after the forms were filed, the FAFSA may be counting two incomes where there is now one. The school can recompute with the contributing parent's income alone, but only with proof that the household has actually split.
• Sibling in college? The FAFSA stopped counting them. Here's how to appealSince 2024-25 the federal formula no longer divides a family's expected contribution by the number of children in college. An appeal is how a family with two tuition bills gets that reality back in front of the school, and it was the basis of several approvals reported this year.
• How to appeal financial aid after the death of a parentIf a parent has died since the forms were filed, the FAFSA is still counting that parent's income. The school can remove it and use the surviving parent's finances. Aid offices handle these reviews quickly; a short, factual letter is enough.
• How to appeal financial aid after a one-time income eventA bonus, a capital gain, a retirement-account withdrawal, a Roth conversion, or a severance payout can make 2025 look like a far richer year than usual. The school can substitute a typical year's income, but it needs to see that the event was real and will not recur.

Another school offered more (award reconsideration)

A different request with no federal rules. Each college decides whether to look at it, and many route it through admissions rather than financial aid.

• Can you ask a college to match another school's offer?Families call it a price match. Colleges call it a review or reconsideration, and whether it works depends almost entirely on which kind of school you are asking. It is a different request from a need appeal and often goes to a different office.

How appeals actually work

1. A need-based appeal is a data correction, not a persuasion exercise. Federal law lets the aid office change the inputs to your aid formula (income, assets, cost of attendance) on documented evidence. It cannot change the formula, and it cannot count recurring living costs.
2. The office needs one thing it did not already know: a dated change with a dollar impact that the FAFSA or CSS Profile could not capture. 'We didn't save enough' is not a circumstance.
3. Ask the office first how it wants the request. Most schools have a form or a secure upload, and several refuse financial documents by email.
4. The letter is one page, under 500 words: who you are, thanks for the award, the one change with dates and dollars, the gap, the request, and a list of attached copies.
5. Decisions are made by each school, are final, apply only at that school, and last one year. Appeal to every school on your list, and again next year if the change continues.

Words to leave out of the letter: “negotiate”, “match”, “counter-offer”, “deserve”, “willing to settle for”. Ask the office to review or reconsider, using the name its own form uses.