<p>As Mom2 brings up, loans and workstudy can be and often are part of a financial aid package. When a school does that, it is using those items towards the defined need, so the student has that much less to put towards family EFC. Students don’t tend to qualify for loans on their own, so when a college "awards’ the Stafford to them as part of the package, that is pretty much it for what the student can borrow without a parent involved. When they are given work study, those work hours and money earned from them go towards that award, again, not to offset the student’s expense. That is why until actual award packages are laid out, it’s impossible to tell which is the “best” offer in many cases. Also work study is not guaranteed. If you don’t find a job that fits your schedule or they run out, that’s it. You gotta work it to get it and at some schools freshmen are last in getting to the job list So those hours that a kid might have hoped to work for some pocket money, are earmarked towards the COA that the school hs defined as need. My niece works three jobs–work study which she has to allocate towards the school bill since her parents are really strapped in making the EFC, and then she works two others for her pocket money and what the school itemizes as “the student EFC”. Yeah, real nice.</p>