Last week, we hosted an insightful session on preparing to appeal your student's college offers. If you missed it, you can catch the session recording here. Plus, watch our emails because we'll be hosting another session early next month.

In response to numerous follow-up emails, particularly regarding the appeal process for merit scholarships, I'd like to offer further clarification.

If your student has received a college acceptance with merit scholarships and you're considering an appeal, follow these steps to better understand the context of the offer and make an informed decision:

• Review the college's prior-year statistics on merit aid distribution and compare the stats with your student's offer. You can quickly access this information by checking the college's common data set or by creating a free account in Insights. Navigate to the Aid/Merit Scholarship tab to review details such as "Freshmen w/o need receiving merit aid" and "Avg merit award for freshmen w/o need."

• Enter your student's acceptances and offers in Compare College Offers. By creating a free account, you can compare your student's offers with those submitted by others for the same colleges. This tool provides valuable insights into past years of offers at the college.

Consider these steps carefully, as they will really help you determine if you should appeal and how much you should ask for or you're likely to receive.

Appealing may not be worthwhile if your student didn't initially receive merit aid and the college has a history of offering minimal aid to a small percentage of students.

For more information on the appeal process and access to a template, visit here.