I heard somewhere that if you get a substantial scholarship (like the Coca-Cola one) it can hurt your aid. Is this true? What if you receive the scholarship after you’ve been accepted/considered for financial aid (ED)?
<p>The financial aid package from the college is designed to meet your need. There is a COA (Cost of Attendance) for the school and there is a EFC (Estimated Family Contribution) for the student. Your NEED is COA minus EFC. They meet your NEED with a combination of grants, loans, and part-time jobs. Grants are free money. Loans have to be paid back. If you get a scholarship from outside of the college, it isn't just money that you get to keep. It does reduce the financial aid package from the school. However, they will usually use the outside scholarship money to reduce your loans and part-time job before they will reduce the grant money from the college.</p>
<p>If you win an outside scholarship after the college has presented its FA package to you, you have to inform the college of the change. All of this stuff shows up on tax forms and they want to see the tax forms.</p>
<p>In theory, the FA package from a college makes it possible for everyone to attend since they are meeting you NEED as defined above. There are two problems with this. 1) The EFC may be very high. It is calculated using your parents income, parents savings, your income, and your savings. The amount of the EFC can be a real shocker. I would recommend that your parents go to one of the free EFC estimators on the web such as the one at <a href="http://www.collegeboard.com%5B/url%5D">www.collegeboard.com</a>. 2) There is no guarantee that a college will meet all of your need.</p>
<p>Coca Cola in particular will try to help. They offer to let you use the money to purchase a computer or setup a line of credit at the bookstore. They do this in particular for schools that reduce FA in direct proportion to outside scholarships.</p>