Your financial aid offer just landed. Maybe it's better than you expected. Maybe it's not. Maybe you're not even sure yet what you're looking at.
Before you do anything else — before you celebrate, before you spiral, before you call anyone — there are five specific things you should do right now. They'll take a few hours, and they'll make every decision after this point significantly clearer.
Step 1: Strip Out the Loans
This is the single most important thing you can do with a financial aid letter, and it's the step most families skip.
Open your offer letter and separate every line item into two buckets:
Grants & Scholarships
These reduce the cost of college. You never pay them back. This is the only category that actually makes a school more affordable.
Loans & Work-Study
Loans must be repaid with interest. Work-study requires actual hours worked. Neither one reduces what college costs.
Many families look at the "Total Aid" line and feel relief. But a package showing $42,000 in total aid may include $14,000 in loans and $8,000 in work-study — meaning only $20,000 is actually free. That school is $22,000 more expensive than the aid figure suggests.
Circle the grants. Circle the scholarships. Everything else — loans, work-study, payment plans — is not aid. Once you know exactly how much free money you've been offered, you're ready for step 2.
Step 2: Calculate Your Actual Net Cost
Take the Cost of Attendance the school provided and subtract only the free money you identified in step 1.
That number — net cost — is what this school will actually cost your family per year. Write it down. It's the only number that matters for comparison.
This makes it look like the school gave you $34,000.
The loans and work-study don't reduce your cost — you still owe or earn them.
Step 3: Check the Renewal Requirements
Before you get too attached to that net cost number, find out whether the scholarship or grant you've been offered will still exist in years 2, 3, and 4.
Many merit scholarships require a minimum GPA — often 3.0 to 3.5 — to renew each year. Need-based grants are recalculated annually based on your updated FAFSA, which means they can change if your family's financial situation changes.
Ask or find the answers to:
- What GPA is required to maintain this scholarship?
- Does the scholarship auto-renew, or do I need to re-apply?
- Is any portion of this offer a one-time award?
- Can need-based grants increase or decrease in future years?
If a $15,000 scholarship requires a 3.5 GPA and you finish your freshman year at a 3.3, you could lose $15,000 per year in years 2 through 4. That changes the four-year cost by $45,000. Always know the renewal terms before you decide.
Step 4: Wait for All Your Offers
If you applied to multiple schools and haven't heard from all of them yet, wait.
It's tempting to commit to the first strong offer that comes in — especially if the school is a good fit and the number looks right. But you can't make a genuinely informed comparison until you have all the offers in front of you.
Most Regular Decision financial aid offers arrive between mid-March and early April. A few schools send them later. The enrollment deadline for most schools is May 1, which gives you several weeks to collect and compare.
The period between when offers arrive and May 1 is when you have the most leverage and the most information. Use it. Don't commit before you need to — and don't panic if the first offer isn't what you hoped for. Wait for the full picture.
Step 5: Identify Whether It's Worth Appealing
Once you have at least two offers to compare, you're in a position to identify whether any of them are worth pushing on.
You have the strongest grounds to appeal when:
- A school of comparable academic standing has offered you significantly more free money
- Your family's financial situation has changed since you filed the FAFSA (job loss, medical expenses, a sibling now in college)
- There are special circumstances the financial aid office wasn't aware of
If you find yourself in any of those situations, an appeal is worth making — and the best time to start is now, not in late April when offices are flooded and time is short.
What Not to Do Right Now
A few things that feel urgent but aren't:
Don't commit early to lock in housing. Most schools hold your housing spot until the May 1 enrollment deadline. You don't need to sacrifice your decision window to get a dorm assignment.
Don't panic if the offer looks low. One offer without context tells you very little. Wait for the other offers, do the net cost math on all of them, and then form a view.
Don't compare sticker prices. The only meaningful comparison is net cost — Cost of Attendance minus free money. A school with a $65,000 sticker price and a $38,000 grant is cheaper than a school with a $42,000 sticker price and a $6,000 grant.
Don't assume the number is final. Offers can be appealed. Many are successfully revised. Know whether you have grounds before you write off a school as unaffordable.
Your Timeline From Here to May 1
You have time to do this right. The families who come out ahead are the ones who slow down, do the math accurately, and advocate for themselves before committing. That process starts today.
If you want to compare every offer side by side — with the net cost calculated automatically and the loans stripped out — that's exactly what Merit is built for.
See What College Actually Costs
Upload your financial aid letters and Merit breaks down every dollar so you can make the right call.
- Break down exactly what you're getting
- Compare schools side-by-side
- Find room to negotiate for more