Hi,
I have been accepted early decision to UPenn and have definitely received enough aid to go since my family is low-income (all in grants, no loans), but I’ve been given quite a bit of work-study every year. I’m a bit unclear as to where outside scholarships can go now – will they go towards the parental contribution, or the student work-study contribution? Or will they just be taken out of my grants?
Thanks so much!
Different schools have different policies about this. You need to look for the answer on Penn’s website or call the school’s FA office and ask. How much work study is “quite a bit”?
No outside scholarship will go toward your parent’s contribution. Your parents will have to pay it.
Outside scholarships will reduce your work study. After that, your Penn grant will be reduced.
While you have no loans in your financial aid package, you may still take a loan if you need to help your parents pay their EFC.
@sybbie719 Ok, thank you so much! Thankfully my parents can pay their EFC, at least this year, so this is good news.
@BelknapPoint 3.5k, which I feel might be a lot? do you think i can make that much in the school year?
Yeah, that is quite a bit, especially for a freshman. How much you work and therefore how much you make will depend on your comfort level. The best thing about work study is that it’s geared around the life of a college student, so your supervisor should be accommodating your academic needs (schedule and number of hours). I would say that it’s unlikely that you would want to or be able to work enough hours to make $3.5k during the academic year.
While $3.5k might seem like a lot, perhaps their WS jobs are paying more per hour. It would not be unusual for ws at Penn to be more than mim wage. If you can get a job on campus paying at least $10/hr you could pretty much make your ws allocation working ~10 hours a week. Remember you will need pocket $ book $ that is not part of your package. If you have ws or a student contribution and do not have a mechanism for fulfilling this requirement (working for it or getting outside scholarships to offset it), you will not get an increase in your FA package.
At schools that meet 100% of demonstrated need, books/supplies, travel and personal expenses very often are included in the COA figure and therefore are indeed part of the financial aid package.
I agree that work study jobs may be paying more than minimum wage, but I think that 10 hours/week for a freshman may be a bit ambitious. Of course, it all depends on the student and the specific situation.
If your parents can’t pay some/all of their EFC, you can take that out in an unsub loan. I wouldn’t necessarily tell your parents that in advance because they may not even try to pay if they know that. Just have it in your “back pocket” as a last resort.
Yes, it is part of the financial aid package, but there is no “free money” to cover these expenses. They are covered by the self help aid from student contribution from summer earnings and work study during the school year.
Was part of the 3.5K for summer work? Work study is usually around $1500 a year and then summer work expectation varies but is often in the $2-3K range. If that is the case it should not be a problem to earn 3.5K per year. Work study jobs on my son’s campus almost all pay a lot because they get part of the money from the federal gov’t. They even include some that are more like volunteer things and research which look nice on a resume. He tends to max out his work study so far and work less over the summer. He also keeps his expenses way lower than what they list on his COA so that helps too.
@acdchai work study is usually around $1500 a year? Really? Maybe that was the case for,your kiddo, but it is certainly very possible,this kid got a $3500 WS award for the school year. And if it’s federal work study…ALL of the money to support it is provided by the federal government.
Very often, lower income kids at places like Penn are given WS awards to help them earn their student contribution…which is usually in that $3000 or so range.
As noted by @sybbie719 the student must at least earn up front money for the first term…as they won’t HAVE any WS earnings before that time. Some work study jobs pay quite well. It all depends on the job. My kid had a WS job that paid $15 an hour. She had no trouble earning $3000 in a school year.
Work study awards for both my kids were in that range and it seemed to be a common amount between their friends so I had assumed that was a fairly standard amount for the 100% need met schools–sorry if I had an inaccurate impression. Earning $1500 was not too hard at all during the year but $3500 he would have had some issues during quarters when he had a number of lab classes and couldn’t work in the afternoons much. Scheduling classes as consistently as you can so you have blocks to study and work definitely helps which my son didn’t consider at first so he had to take a job that had totally flexible hours but wasn’t his first choice for his first quarter.
Whether or not you can clear $3500 is going to depend on what kind of jobs are available on campus and how able you are to keep up with a huge workload. I’m able to clear about $3000 per semester but I work 25 hours in the higher paying research jobs on campus. But even if you make $10/hr and only work ~13-15 hours a week, you should be able to clear that in a year.
Or just get summer internships.
You don’t have to earn the whole work study award. That is the maximum you can earn, because of need.
It is nice to have outside scholarships, and at least in freshman year, to maybe work a bit less.