Your aid letter arrives, the number is not enough, and most students treat that as the end of it.
US universities publish a process for exactly this situation. It has a name, usually reconsideration or appeal, and it has a deadline. None of the pages quoted below excludes international applicants, and one of the grounds applies only to students paying from abroad.
Here is how it works, taken from what the universities publish.
What an appeal is
It is a request to re-examine your family's finances, not a negotiation. The trigger is that something about your circumstances has changed, or was never captured properly in the first place.
Harvard frames it around timing: you may request a review when "your family experiences a significant change in circumstances after your application for financial aid is processed," and says either you or your parents may ask.
Boston University puts a number on it. It defines a significant change as "a change of greater than 15% of your family's annual income compared to the income on your initial applications."
What counts as a change
MIT publishes the clearest list of what it will review. It includes:
- A loss of income
- A change in your household, such as a sibling starting university
- Medical expenses, documented as out-of-pocket costs after insurance
- Extreme currency devaluations
- A change in your dependency status
It also names circumstances such as refugee or asylee status, parent abandonment and incarceration.
Two limits are worth reading carefully. MIT will not consider "events that have not yet happened, such as an expected job loss or future medical expenses." And BU notes that a job loss in the current tax year may not be assessable until the following academic year, once tax returns document it.
So an appeal is built on something that has already happened and can be evidenced, rather than on something you expect.
The currency rule
This is the ground that exists only for students paying from another country, and at MIT it does not require an appeal at all.
MIT's published position: "If your country's currency experienced a devaluation of 20% or more, we will automatically adjust your financial aid offer." It reviews currency rates each year on 15 June before the academic year begins, using College Board CSS Profile rates, and says adjustments outside that automatic policy are considered only in extreme circumstances.
If your currency has moved sharply against the dollar since you filed your financial information, that is a concrete, documented reason to contact the financial aid office, and at one university it is handled for you.
What they will not do
The most common idea about aid appeals is the one that fails.
MIT states it plainly: "We aren't able to match another school's offer just because they are giving you more aid (for example, a merit scholarship somewhere else)."
A better offer elsewhere is not, by itself, a change in your circumstances. Check each university's own page before you build an appeal around a competing offer, because at a university that has ruled it out in writing, that is the one argument guaranteed to fail.
The documents
This is where an international appeal diverges from a domestic one, and where students get stuck.
Much of the published guidance assumes FAFSA and US tax returns. BU's reconsideration process, for instance, asks admitted students for the CSS Profile, the FAFSA, and "Complete Federal Tax Returns & W-2s for the tax year of record". If you have never filed a US tax return, that list does not describe you.
What the universities that fund international students ask for instead is their own financial aid form plus documentation of income in your own currency:
- Cornell requires the CSS Profile from all international applicants seeking aid, and may then request further documents through the College Board's Institutional Documentation Service.
- Rice uses the CSS Profile for international students, asks them to upload tax documents through its applicant portal rather than through IDOC, and accepts "foreign tax returns with official English translations" or income verification documents where taxes were not filed. It also requires an International Student Financial Statement.
Two things follow. Find the university's international financial aid page rather than its general one, because the requirements differ. And if your parents' income is not documented the way a US form expects, translated income statements and an explanation of why no tax return exists are what takes their place.
The timing
An appeal is worth nothing after the deposit deadline, and the windows are short.
BU sets an appeal deadline of 22 April for admitted students against an enrolment deposit deadline of 1 May. NYU runs appeals for continuing students in published rounds, with a fall first round closing 12 July and decisions returned between 24 and 30 July.
Harvard notes a smaller trap: newly admitted students have to wait up to 48 hours after admission before the reconsideration form becomes available to them.
The practical rule is to open the appeal as soon as the offer arrives, not after you have finished comparing offers, because the comparison usually takes longer than the window.
How to do it
Find the page. Search the university's name with "financial aid reconsideration" or "appeal". Harvard, MIT, BU, NYU and Cornell all publish one. Where you cannot find a page, write to the financial aid office and ask what their process is.
Submit it their way. BU tells applicants to upload through its portal and says "Please do not email your appeal". An appeal sent down the wrong channel may not be read at all.
Lead with the change, and evidence it. Name what changed, when, and by how much, with documents attached. BU's 15% income threshold is a useful benchmark for whether a change is large enough to be worth raising.
Say what you can pay. An appeal that states a number is easier to act on than one that says the offer is insufficient.
Ask about currency separately. If your currency has fallen, raise it directly with the financial aid office, since it may be handled outside the appeal process entirely.
A template you can adapt
Where a university has no published form, or where the form leaves room for a written explanation, this is the shape the request takes. Replace everything in brackets, and keep it short.
To the Financial Aid Office at University Name,
My name is First and Last Name, and I am an international applicant from
City, Country. I am very excited and honored to have been accepted to
University Name, as it is my number one choice. [Reason 1, Reason 2, and
Reason 3] are the reasons I would love to attend it.
However, as a low-income international student, I am concerned about my
family's ability to finance my degree at your university. I would like to
inquire about the possibility of increasing my financial aid award.
My financial situation is the following: my mother is a stay-at-home wife,
while my father works as a teacher at a public high school in Tashkent. I
also have a sibling who is 7 years old, and a grandparent with a medical
condition who lives with us. Considering these circumstances, my family can
contribute $XXX USD/year, which is $XXX short of my current financial aid
award. I have attached my father's salary statement to this email for your
consideration.
I really appreciate your help in reviewing my circumstances and considering
the adjustment of my financial aid award. I look forward to hearing from you!
Best Regards,
First and Last Name
What the template is doing
Four things, each of which a weaker request leaves out.
It names the gap in dollars. "My family can contribute $XXX, which is $XXX short" gives the office a figure to work with, rather than asking them to work out what you meant.
It attaches the evidence in the same message. A salary statement, or the equivalent where no payslip exists. Do not promise to send it later.
It explains the household, because a dependent sibling and a grandparent with a medical condition are the kinds of circumstances that appear on MIT's list of what it reviews. Say who depends on the income, not only what the income is.
It says the university is your first choice, which costs you nothing and tells an office deciding where to put limited money that the money would land a student.
Before you send it
If the university publishes a reconsideration form, use the form and send this as the explanation inside it rather than as a separate email. Boston University tells applicants to upload through its portal and says "Please do not email your appeal", so an email there may never be read.
Start your own journey
At Harvard, MIT, BU, NYU and Cornell, the aid letter comes with a published route to ask for it to be looked at again. That route is easy to miss from outside the US, because the pages describing it are mostly written as though the reader files a US tax return.
If the number is not enough, and something in your circumstances has changed or was never captured, there is a published route and a date by which you have to use it.
Kai, the Borderless AI college counselor, finds the appeal process for each university on your list, tells you what each one asks international students to submit, and keeps the deadlines in one place. It's free to use.
Start with Kai, and read the stories from students who got the number changed.
