My Question is if I get (lets say $25,000 in Financial aid, scholarships,and grants), but what if when I graduate from High School a College offers me a free ride into their College. Now do I have to give back the $25,000 or do I get to pocket the money and use it towards my education and my meals?
It all depends on who gives the scholarship and what restrictions they put on it. And on the school giving the ‘free ride’ (which usually means the cost of attendance, with tuition, all fees, books, and room and board). Some scholarships and awards are yours to keep, other must be used for tuition, some schools take all outside awards first, then give you whatever tuition remains. It just depends.
You need to know that in most cases you don’t get handed a bunch of coins and dollar bills. The amounts from the aid offers are applied electronically to your tuition, fees, housing, meals, etc. in the college’s accounting system. Some places will put $X into an account for you at the campus book store to buy books and supplies that are required for your classes. Again you won’t see any coins or dollar bills. In fact, you might not even be able to use that account to buy anything that isn’t on the official class supply list.
If you do end up with enough scholarships and grants to cover your housing, meals, and personal expenses, you need to keep track of that part of the scholarship and grant money because it will probably be taxable. So you need to set aside enough to pay your state and federal income taxes on that part of the money next April.
What are you talking about? Cost of attendance includes tuition, fees…and things like housing, food, books and personal expenses.
If you get a scholarship from an outside source, you MUST report it to your college. MUST.
If you have received need based aid, it is very possible the school will reduce your need based award because you have reduced your need.
If you have a full merit award, that could shed a different light on an outside scholarship. But usually outside scholarships in the $25,000 range have a “need” component…and if your school is meeting all of your need…you wouldn’t have remaining need.
Just be honest to all.
And remember, any scholarships used to pay room, board, transportation, persona expenses are not qualified educational expenses and will be viewed as taxable income.
With quite a few scholarship awards the checks are made out to the college so if they have the incorrect college name on file you will have to straighten that out. Some of the smaller awards might give you a check made out to you. Some cut checks in the spring, some in the summer, some as late as early fall…most try to get them out before the tuition invoices come in August. If the grants or scholarships are coming from the college then those will not transfer to a different college so your post is, as others have said, unclear.