<p>Another question? DH is "chasing scholarships" and is really overwhelmed with all the additional essays. I'm concerned about the time spent on them affecting his regular school work.</p>
<p>***Isn't it true that they NEVER apply to our EFC unless he were to get more than the "need amount" in scholarships? We have a high need amount so the odds of getting scholarships worth more is unlikely. Schools just apply the scholarships to reduce the grant amounts, right? Most of the schools he applied to except the UCs and USC meet full need without loans so what is the benefit of him doing all this extra work? </p>
<p>For UC, they calculate our EFC and add another $9200 for student's self help. DS was "invited to apply" for regents and if he is lucky enough to get it, will it just replace grants or will something go to DS's self help? The regents one is just 2 essays and a recommendation so of course, he is going to apply but what really is the value if it just replaces grants they would award him anyway and not come off of what we have to pay?</p>
<p>Should I tell him to relax and not kill himself over applying to all these scholarships? He really has about 10 or more he is working on including the Fountainhead one which requires reading that giant book on top of all his school work. He is applying to some local ones too through school that seem to take a lot of work for a little bit of money. I guess I just don't really understand how it works?</p>
<p>For someone with a low EFC (high need), then chasing merit scholarships can be a total waste of time IF the schools meet need. </p>
<p>(If instate)…For UCs, with a low EFC, you’re probably going to get Cal Grant, UC grants, maybe Pell (how low is your EFC), Stafford and Perkins. If you get SOME merit, then maybe they’ll apply it to the loans. That’s a good thing.</p>
<p>Thanks mom2college kids. I have been researching and see that if DS is lucky enough to get any scholarships, they will apply them to his loans and his work study first before reducing the grants so I think that makes it worth DS’s efforts to keep at the scholarship apps. If not for the UC’s then it may be helpful for USC whose package will certainly include loans.</p>
<p>Our EFC is ~$9K now because of the over time back payment and the UC’s won’t even look at it as special circumstances until after July 1st. With DS’s share and our EFC, we are looking at close to $20K or double our EFC. I just saw that UCLA wouldn’t even notify him of getting regents until as late as April 28th (according to some of the old posts) and since we can’t even send info about the overtime payment until July, how could he even compare “packages” to decide where to go? I think that maybe UC’s are out of his reach even if he got a scholarship, regents or other? </p>
<p>Crossing my fingers for some other acceptances! Most of the other schools have already said they will “consider” the one time payment and have noted on DS’s acccount that they received the documentation for DH’s work. </p>
<p>In our situation my daughter’s school applies her outside scholarship to her portion of the EFC. Not the parents’ portion just hers, but we look it at as all one EFC anyway. So in the outside chance she received a scholarship that was more than her portion of the EFC only then would it reduce the school grant. So it’s not always a losing cause. But we have a unique local scholarship organization so she only had to apply once. </p>
<p>The Regents at UCs is definitely worth it. While my daughter chose another school, she did receive Regents at one of the UCs and it was her highest scholarship out of the three UCs she was accepted to.</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply, PhotoOp. Yes, I see that the UC’s policy is to apply it to loans, work study first. “we look it at as all one EFC”=same here! I don’t know many high school kids who happen to have $10K per year just sitting around. Frankly, I don’t even know how a student could make that much through the school year and summer?</p>
<p>Thanks to the replies here and some other digging, I can see that it’s worth it! I was just feeling so bad for him with all the extra work and essays right now on top of the school work. The essay prompts are just so bizarre! Today he got a list of weird words and has to write a story using the words. What happened to the “tell me about yourself” prompts? They are so strange that he can’t possible reuse any essays he’s already written (and maybe that is the whole point-ugh.)</p>
<p>My experience is that outside scholarships can be useful if you target which ones you have a high likelihood of winning. D1 attended a meet need/no loan school. The extra scholarships were applied to her summer work expectation and her school year work expectation and I asked for an increase in COA for travel (they allocated a small amount and we are across the country) and for a new computer. The scholarships were then applied to these items as well. She had some “left over” that replaced a portion of the school grants - but that was only fair.</p>
<p>D2 used her outside scholarship to apply to her loans in the award package. You could then still take out student loans thereby technically decreasing your EFC.</p>
<p>D1 got the old Byrd scholarship of 1.5k/yr. As a fr she was on a full tuitin, R&B scholarship and actually got some of the scholarship money back in cash at the end of the year.</p>
<p>As transfer to a no loan school, it was applied to her WS. That was helpful for her because although she still had a WS job, she don’t have the pressure to work for the entire allotment and was able concentrate more on her studies and outside activities. D2, who doesn’t have outside scholarships, left some money on the table last year :(.</p>
<p>@NEM Am I correct in my understanding that you can ask for a travel allowance increase when determining COA? My son’s school allocated $1000 for travel. My guess is that with three trips back and forth, the amount wil be closer to $1500. How do you go about doing that? Do you just write the financial aid office?</p>
<p>It all depends as to how the student is doing and how stressful and time consuming these awards are. If they are really digging into his academics, becoming an unhealthy obsession, and adding stress, unless you really need the money, it’s not likely to be worth it. My DS only got one out of about a hundred scholarships to which he applied, and it was fluke, and a very specialized award to which he was the only applicant. That program ended his year and he ended up getting nearly double his award since they wanted to shut the doors. He, however, didn’t break any sweat in applying, and the process seemed to only cut into his couch potato time, so I didn’t think a thing about it. If I saw it cutting into school assignments and causing issues in other areas of his life, I would have gotten concerned. Talk about undermining the end by gnawing at the start! </p>
<p>Most of the time the awards do offer something. Whether it replaces the work study or loan component of the package or there is splitting of the award, or can go towards a computer or other such thing, there is usually some benefit. Check the schools on the list and find out which ones offer ZERO benefit from outside scholarships in situations your child may fall into. They do exist. But when I looked at some, including my own alma mater, which can be stingy when it comes to aid, I found that a number of schools, do have some generous provisions, some even letting you keep the awards except in violation of federal rules. The federal government does require that Unsub Staffords, work study, Perkins, and just about all of their goodies other than PELL have to be adjusted if an outside award reduces then need. </p>
<p>When an award replaces a Stafford loan, that means the loan can be taken on an unsubsidized basis and applied to your EFC, so in a sense, though you “lose” the loan as financial aid, you can still have for less generous terms. So it’s not a big loss when that happens</p>
<p>I was surprised how different colleges used scholarships. Some colleges let my daughter apply them to her portion of the payment, some like Bryn Mawr had about 50% if I remember correctly go toward THEIR contribution and some colleges I’ve read, it doesn’t help at all. I remember an article in a news magazine highlighting that fact. A young woman had worked so hard to get a scholarship that was a few thousand dollars and none of it helped her or her parents. They sent it to the school. I didn’t understand that at all.
It is good to ask ahead of time how the money will be given and how it might be applied. My daughter received a 500.00 award that was just given to her to use for books, etc. and that was very helpful since it was just for her to use.</p>
<p>^^^Momomusician17 - I called the FA office. Actually I called a number of them to see how they applied the o/s scholarships and it was different at each school (as Debruns said).
I asked for an increase in COA - they had allocated @ 900 for travel and we live across the country and one round trip is @ $600. The increase in COA created “need” that could then be filled by the scholarship. I also asked for an adjustment for a new computer (as allowed by Fed guidelines) since hers had died during the app season. This extra need allowed us to use more of the o/s scholarship (and we did buy a computer).
I don’t know how amenable they would be if we didn’t have that extra scholarship we were trying to spend - but it is allowed as part of professional judgement.</p>
<p>It never hurts to ask! I found this FA Director particularly wonderful and plan to send her flowers when my D1 graduates this year.</p>