Deciding between two aid offers

Compare what you'd actually pay, not what the letters emphasize. Aid letters are written to look generous, and the easiest way to do that is to foreground the grant total and bury everything else.

For each school, find one number: cost of attendance minus grants and scholarships that you don't repay. That's your real cost. Loans and work-study are not aid in the sense that matters here—one is debt and the other is a job.

Then multiply by four, adjusting for anything you know will change. A first-year award that isn't renewable, or one tied to a GPA you'd have to maintain in a hard major, can make the cheaper-looking school more expensive by junior year.

Read the renewal conditions specifically. 'Renewable for four years' and 'renewable with satisfactory academic progress' and 'renewable with a 3.5' are three very different promises, and the third one has ended a lot of enrollments.

Check what happens to your institutional aid if you win an outside scholarship. Some schools reduce their own grant dollar for dollar, which means the award you fought for benefits the school rather than you. This policy is usually findable and worth knowing before you spend a fall applying.

If one offer is clearly better but the other school is your first choice, appeal. Financial aid appeals are a normal process, not a favor, and a competing offer in writing is the strongest thing you can bring to one.

Whatever you decide, write down the four-year number for both. Choosing the more expensive school with your eyes open is a legitimate decision. Choosing it because the letter was formatted more flatteringly is not.