Appealing a financial aid decision over a documented change in circumstances is one process. Asking a school to match a better offer from a competitor is a completely different one -- closer to merit negotiation than a professional-judgment review -- and schools vary enormously in whether they'll engage with it at all. Here's a real, current example of one that will, and how to tell before you ask.
The real example: Cornell's official matching policy
Cornell has an actual, official policy here, not an informal courtesy: it will review a competing need-based financial aid offer from another Ivy League school, MIT, Duke, or Stanford, and if that offer is more favorable, Cornell may adjust its own package -- in the form of grant aid, not loans, per the university's own framing when the policy was announced. This isn't automatic: you have to proactively request the review yourself with the competing offer in hand; Cornell doesn't match anything without being asked. It's also specifically about need-based aid -- Cornell has stated it no longer coordinates with other schools on the formula behind its packages, for antitrust reasons, but the case-by-case review of an actual competing offer is a separate, still-live practice.
Why this varies so much by school
Not every school runs anything like this. Some schools will informally reconsider a package against a specific competing offer without a formal policy; others state plainly they won't. The pattern that holds broadly: this kind of negotiation tends to work best at private schools with more discretionary aid funds to work with, and is far less likely to go anywhere at public institutions with less flexibility in their aid budgets. There's no substitute for asking the specific school directly rather than assuming either way based on how selective or well-known it is.
What this means for you
- Don't assume every school works like Cornell -- its policy is real and official, but it's specific to Cornell, not a general practice you can expect anywhere else.
- If you're going to ask, have the actual competing offer in hand -- a specific dollar figure from a specific school, not a general "I think I could get more elsewhere."
- Keep this separate from a documented special-circumstances appeal -- they're reviewed by different processes and different logic; conflating the two in one request muddies both.
- Ask directly rather than guessing -- a school's website often won't say explicitly whether it does this, and the only reliable way to find out is to contact the financial aid office and ask.
- This is a genuinely different lever than the appeal process -- see the full breakdown of how to appeal a financial aid decision for the documented-circumstances process this is deliberately separate from.