<p>I know that outside scholarships may reduce need-based aid, but I don't qualify for need based anyway. I am, however, expecting some merit aid. My dad's work gives me 13k, but if I were to receive any merit aid, would the university subtract the 13k from that?</p>
<p>It depends. It is possible that the school might reduce your merit award if the total exceeded the cost of attendance at the school. </p>
<p>Best bet is to call the school and ask.</p>
<p>Many schools will let you stack merit scholarships…even if they exceed COA. they’ll refund you the difference. However, some won’t.</p>
<p>Some schools with very limited merit money will have a policy that they will reduce THEIR merit awards if when combined with outside awards, the amounts exceed a certain amount. At some schools, that amount is Tuition. So, at those schools, if tuition were $30k and the school gave you a merit scholarship for $20k, and then you got an outside scholarships for $13k, then the school would reduce their award by $3k…so that the total would still be $30k.</p>
<p>However, those scenarios seem to be more rare. Usually, schools will just stack outside scholarships on top of institutional. </p>
<p>What school is this? You need to check the school for its policies.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen a school that reduces merit awards that exceed COA if need based aid is not in the picture. Anyone know a school that does that?</p>
<p>The amounts awards need to be reported for taxes and a student could owe taxes, depending on amounts, I know.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>I don’t know of any that reduce merit that exceeds COA if all aid is merit.</p>
<p>However, there are some that have a TUITION limit and will reduce if some of the merit is institutional…like the example that I gave. these are often mid-lower level privates that have very limited merit/FA to give so they set limits.</p>
<p>There is a federal formula that determines the upper limit of aid you can get. If my D stacked all her merit aid, it exceeds that number for her school and merit aid was truncated, starting with state supported (lottery) and institutional merit aid (which makes since because that leaves more money in pool for other students by letting outside scholarships pay first). Now that number is still over what it actually costs her to attend, so she gets overage check. But I think the formula is something like tuiton, fees, etc plus max cost housing plus max cost food plus maybe some number for travel.
But I don’t think there is anywhere where you could stack merit aid to total something like $50000 where the COA FA figure is like $22,000.</p>
<p>Will add that sometimes outside scholarships are given directly to students, so may not decrease it, but most of the ones my Ds had where checks written jointly to school and student, so had to be turned in to school and was figured into scholarship total.</p>
<p>I certainly don’t know every school’s policies, but the two I have personal experience with (duquesne and U of South Carolina) will only allow stacking of merit aid up to the cost of attendance.</p>
<p>Also, most schools require that you inform them of ANY outside scholarships, paid to the student included, so check with your school.</p>
<p>“But I don’t think there is anywhere where you could stack merit aid to total something like $50000 where the COA FA figure is like $22,000.”</p>
<p>Federal guidelines don’t really apply to merit scholarships since they don’t have purview over that. If a student were to collect private scholarships that exceed COA, the school can’t “keep” that money, nor do the feds have any rules about that…except that the funds not covering tuition will be taxed.</p>
<p>There are students who’ve rec’d merit that has exceeded COA, and the school just refunds the money to the student. It is subject to taxes, just like the part of merit that covers room, board, etc, is taxed.</p>
<p>There is a student here on CC that accepted Baylors NMF scholarship, but also got a ton of outside merit that far exceeded COA, Baylor refunded the money to the student since it doesn’t have a policy against stacking scholarships, etc.,</p>
<p>A school can cut back its institutional merit if the total of merit exceeds COA (if that’s their stated policy), but they are under no obligation to do so by the feds. The feds can only insist that SEOG, Perkins, and other fed loans be withdrawn if all merit meets COA. The exception is Pell…that is awarded even if merit meets COA.</p>
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