<p>Okay, so I received my financial aid award package today. I don't really understand it completely but I think I have the gist- and I'm pretty excited because so far it looks like I'll be able to attend!
I just have a few questions if anyone has any idea:</p>
<p>How accurate is the preliminary award? Is the official award usually pretty much the same as the preliminary (once adjustments based on actual COA and so forth are accounted for)? I mean off by a thousand dollars is roughly the same to me, but can there be large discrepancies? Like with the official award being 5,000 dollars less or so?</p>
<p>If your income stays around the same, will you get roughly the same award every year?</p>
<p>Does one get the Federal Pell Grant and Federal SEOG Grant each year, if their income stays the same?</p>
<p>How does UVA treat outside scholarships? Like do they reduce the money that offer you by the amount of an outside scholarship? Or do they allow you to use it on books and the such?</p>
<p>Thank you for any and all help, I'm pretty much an idiot when it comes to this stuff I have no idea. Very excited to go!! But I have to get all this straight before I can be sure I can >.<</p>
<p>I’m not a financial aid officer, so I can’t answer all of your questions, but for outside scholarships, how they are spent is determined by the scholarship. Some scholarships are restricted and the group offering them dictates how they are spent (often, on tuition). Others are unrestricted and the student decides how to spend them (books, meal plan, etc.). </p>
<p>I’m not 100% certain about this, but back when I was involved in financial aid at another school, the unrestricted scholarships tended to be the local ones (your town’s Lion’s or Rotary Club, for example). The big, national scholarships tended to be restricted. </p>
<p>Again, I’m not a financial aid officer, so I have to direct you to them in getting official answers to your question. </p>
<p>Most colleges try to keep need-based aid stable from year to year, as long as your situation doesn’t change. If, for instance, parents have 2 kids in college at the same time, and then one graduates, you should expect a reduction in aid. If there is an increase in income or assets, you can expect a reduction in aid. </p>
<p>Pell grants are not guaranteed to not be reduced year to year, and currently are the subject of a major fight in Washington. The demand and need for Pell grants has rapidly increased. Too much money has been wasted on the percentage of profit colleges that mainly exist to soak up federal money and loans.</p>
<p>The Republicans in the House voted for a billion dollar reduction in Pells. Obama is trying to shift funds around to maintain Pell grants at the same level for fall and spring semesters. To achieve that, he is proposing to cut other college funding programs, such as summer Pells, subsidized tuition for grad and professional schools, and Byrd scholarships. Anything that involves federal funding is in a state of flux.</p>