<p>I've heard that applying to some small scholarships may dramatically reduce the amount of financial aid you receive from Stanford (or other large/rich colleges)</p>
<p>For example, if Stanford was going to offer you $10,000 in financial aid, but then you find out you won $500 from a scholarship, your financial aid may be reduced to something like $9000 or less. That would make the scholarship worthless, right? Since you would have received 10 grand in the beginning</p>
<p>Thanks for the info</p>
<p>This is Stanford's scholarship policy from their web site:
"We will decrease the self-help portion of your need-based financial aid package (loans and work) dollar-for-dollar when you include outside scholarships in funding your education. Only at the point at which your outside scholarships eliminate all self-help aid will we begin to decrease your university scholarship funds."</p>
<p>In other words, your scholarships funds will first be applied to cancel out loans and work-study (which isn't free money anyway), and then to any grants or scholarships (which is free money).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/current/2_4_outside.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/current/2_4_outside.html</a></p>
<p>So if you had, say, $2000 a year you were supposed to earn through work, with the $500 scholarship, your expected earnings will decrease to $1500. Or, your expected loan will decrease $500.</p>