<p>For example, if you (without the scholarship) were to receive 20k in grants, and 15k in federal loans, with a couple thousand your family has to pay for out of their pocket a year as a financial plan. Would receiving a merit scholarship of say, 10k, would I get less grant money, or would my loans decrease?</p>
<p>Not sure If I made it clear, just ask if you need clarification.</p>
<p>First of all, you wouldn’t be given $15k in federal loans. Stafford loans are $5500 for frosh year, 6500 for soph, 7500 for jr and sr years.</p>
<p>The merit scholarship would likely first reduce any gaps in need, loans, and work-study. That is how many schools do it. However, you need to check with each school’s policy.</p>
<p>Sorry, meant federal and school loans combined. Thank you.</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>School loans are usually federal loans. Most schools are NOT lenders. They just help coordinate with the fed loans.</p>
<p>I know that there are a few schools that do their own lending, but they’re few and often the loans are small - like a couple of thousand. (not enough to combine with fed to be $15k).</p>
<p>Are you talking about a merit scholarship from the school or an outside scholarship? I believe that any merit scholarship the school gives is calculated first, then grants added. Outside scholarships are handled differently from school to school.</p>
<p>In my experience, merit scholarships decrease work-study first then the need based grants. So yes, if you got a 10K scholarship, the 20K in grants would decrease.</p>
<p>^^^
That’s if there aren’t any student loans in the package. If there are, those usually get reduced before grants.</p>
<p>If COA is $50k and EFC is $20k, then need is $30k</p>
<p>So, if FA package consists of…</p>
<p>$15k in grants
$7k in student loans (stafford and perkins)
$3k in work study
$5k in gap</p>
<p>Then, at some schools…a $15k/yr scholarship would likely wipe out the gap, the w/s, and the loans. The grant would stay the same. But, it the scholarship was for $20k, then it would wipe out the same things and it would wipe out $5k of the grant. </p>
<p>The only way to reduce EFC (which I think the student needs to do) is to get scholarships that are large enough that they exceed need. At that point they will effectively reduce EFC.</p>
<p>however, some schools have a policy that scholarships can only reduce tuition.</p>