Definitive information about Cal Grant/Pell Grant recipients receiving outside scholarships?

Parents Forum
1

I have read conflicting information on how Cal State and UC schools treat outside scholarships for people who recieve Cal Grants or Pell Grants.

My experience with my oldest son is that schools just basically eat the scholarship, and thus, it’s a waste of time even applying for outside scholarships.

Has anyone experienced anything different? I am looking to hear from anyone whose child received a Cal Grant A and/or a Pell Grant, but was also able to keep outside scholarship to stack on top of that to pay down some of the room and board costs.

Thank you!

2

So are there no parents on this forum whose child has received both a Cal Grant and outside scholarship? Is this a rare thing? (Maybe for CC)

3

Try the Financial Aid forum.

4

Will do. I also emailed a friend who’s knowledgeable (hopefully) about f. aid matters.

5

I received a Cal Grant, Pell Grant, scholarship from the school and an outside scholarship. The outside scholarship was just for the first year but it did not change my other scholarships.

6

Could you PM me or may I PM you, engineerisme?

7

https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/financial-aid/types/scholarships/ indicates how UCSD applies scholarships for students who also get need-based financial aid. Unmet need in the basic CA resident package, various types of loans, and work-study are replaced before grants are replaced.

You may want to call to verify that it applies to both UCSD and outside scholarships.

Assuming that the above is the case, the first dollars of scholarships will reduce the net price by replacing the categories above. But then additional scholarships will no longer reduce the net price because they replace grants, until the scholarship amount becomes larger than all of these categories.

SDSU appears to have a similar policy of applying outside scholarships to loans and work study before reducing grants, according to http://go.sdsu.edu/student_affairs/financialaid/donorinstructions.aspx

You may want to check to see if other schools have the same or different policies.

8

ucb,

I will confirm with other schools, but after talking with my friend who is an expert in f. aid, seeing those links confirmed what she told me. Not sure why I didn’t understand it before.

In the case of my oldest son, in 2012, our EFC was about 10.5K. At the time, he had received both need-based aid and the full tuition scholarship to Harvey Mudd, and the remaining cost was about 10.5K. There was no way to lower that with his outside scholarship, so it would have simply “disappeared” because they were not going to go past the EFC as per their policy.

Caltech, OTOH, had offered my son much more aid past above our EFC. As my friend explained it, the schools had a different way of calculating need. I believe she said Caltech didn’t take equity into account. For Caltech, our billed amount would have been around $1400, a much better deal than Mudd. (But as you know, he went elsewhere)

So, now we come to current year, and our EFC is about $4400. So, what that tells me is, say I run a f. aid calculator for CSULB, and we will owe 11K (being that Cal/Pell Grant seems to have a set dollar amount for all Cal State schools and seems to cover around the cost of tuition). My son can bring outside scholarship in to cover up to $6600.

In the case of the links you sent me, maybe I’m reading them wrong, but it seems to me that SDSU would allow outside scholarships to cover up to cost of attendance, whereas at UCSD, they only cover up to EFC or unmet need.

Am I seeing that correctly?

I’ll take this question back to my friend, as well, to make sure I understand. And it might well be that I’ll need to go school by school, but it’s probably best to wait until all the decisions are made.

9

Let’s say that your EFC is $4400, and the school expect a student contribution of $9600, for a net price of $14000 after meeting need off a list price of $30000.

Then the first $9600 of merit will reduce student loan or work, reducing the net price to $4400. But the next $16000 of merit money will replace grants, with no reduction in net price. But then additional merit money after that reduces EFC and net price.

At least that is how I understand it for schools like UCSD.

10

Ok, I think I understand. Thanks, ucb.