Scholarship negotiations?

[LidoLil]

Have temporarily namechanged as don't want to inadvertently out dd ...

She's been offered a decent scholarship at a GDST school - we're also waiting to hear the results from another local school, generally perceived as more prestigious - dd had a scholarship interview there and I think/hope that she has a pretty good chance of a decent scholarship there too, plus we also have a good state back-up

How much room for manoeuvre (if any) is there with scholarship offers? Could we try to up the amount offered?

Nope. They tend to have defined amounts allocated to scholarships, and they have plenty of good candidates. If you turn your noses up at an offer, they'll be happy enough to move onto the next one on the list.

This will all be school specific but we're already aware of GDST increasing scholarship offers in the last couple of weeks ahead of the 14th Feb offers.

The most successful negotiations don't appear to have mentioned money upfront, and as with any negotiation you want as much information as possible when you go in, eg numbers applying, numbers offered, acceptances to date, where your dd is ranked, and what extras she is able to offer.

If you need more financial help, ask about add-on bursaries

Scholarships rarely change in amount, especially when value of award (if it has cash value at all) is published.

Bursaries can be much more flexible. I'm assuming you applied for a bursary as you seem to be relying on reduction of fees. Will you be hearing about the outcome of that at the same time? Unless the school is very rich, there won't be much room to manoeuvre, but there may be some. But has shown herself to be in the scholarship frame, scaring well on your bursary application is likely.

We were offered a GDST music scholarship for DD - quite small, but then their fees were also reasonably low. Our prep school headmistress went in to bat for us at our preferred school (which had a later offer announcement day), telling them what her previous offer was and indicating, I think, that they would have to better that by a considerable amount if they wanted DD (their fees were higher so they had to reduce more). Have no idea how influential she was, but the second school offered us something out of our ballpark dreams. Speaking to them since, they simply say they knew what she was worth to them, what her value was on the school market, and what we were able to pay (We also applied for a bursary and were borderline). Do you have a good head of school who has good relations with the secondary schools? In our experience it can have a huge effect. Hit it from all angles. (Should add of course that DD performed her socks off and was worth everything they offered!)

Friends of friends did it; their DC was offered four scholarships and they played one of against the other and did get some increase out of their first choice.
Just depends if your that type of personality, some people naturally haggle over everything, I know I'm not.

Happy, yes you are right - though for bursary level families like us, it makes a huge difference..........

hmm - above the bursary cut-off but not so well-off that a few thousand over the next few years won't make a big difference to our finances...

will see what the other school offers and think hard!

Does the school have charitable status?

If not, they might decide to put more money into scholarships, rather to bursaries to widen access. The trend with charity is definitely to smaller scholarships and more numerous and/or more generous bursaries.

What state school fall backs do you have? If affordability is going to be such a problem for you, then it might be better to take the disappointment now rather than struggle later. Hard choice, but inevitable sometimes.

Is your child the type all schools will be desperate to have, because they are likely to be Oxbridge material, playing in the National Youth orchestra or sport at national level? Those kind of things might make schools really look to offer more.

Most scholarship kids are bright but not in this league and sadly, really top scholarships are in some sense 'buying' those kids and schools will not be prepared to 'pay' more for the bright but not amazing.