Award Displacement at Northwestern

Paying for College
41

From the awards I’ve seen with PELL, it has always been integrated into the school grants. It has been many years since I have seen anyone with financial aid have their expected contribution eliminated by merit. I suspect that except at the very few most generous schools, PELL and merit reduce institutional grants into expected contribution, and all of this is done in house without the workings shown.

I have seen loans and workstudy replaced by scholarships.

In this case, I don’t know if NU has eliminated self help from their financial aid packages. If they have not, I suspect that some of the institutional merit money went towards loans/workstudy and maybe even towards need grants. No way to tell

42

@MarcoContreras

Your parents are first in line in terms of funding your college education. So…NU computed your financial need AND your family contribution. That family contribution is expected to be paid by the family. When you receive outside scholarships…your financial need is reduced…and therefore, your need based aid is reduced.

If you had wanted to lessen the financial costs to your family, you could have applied to colleges where you would have garnered significant merit aid…and possibly the costs to attend would have been less than at Northwestern. But that wasn’t your choice, apparently.

The question you and your family need to ask is…is Northwestern affordable or not.