<p>Does anyone know if Duke allows outside scholarships or merit aid to cover you're EFC. Like after they tell you how much your side of the bill is, can i apply outside scholarships to that? My ability to attend will highly rely on whether or not i can! so this is important!</p>
<p>Outside scholarships take away from your FA package. However, they take away loans first. Let’s say you were awarded an FA package of $20k, $15k in grants and $5k in loans. And you got $6k in outside scholarships. Duke completely eliminates your loans freshman year and gives you a $1k reduction in grants. Essentially, getting outside scholarships greater than the amount of your loan doesn’t do you any good. At least, that is how it was done a few years ago and I don’t think they’ve changed it. I received two outside scholarships; half of each was applied first semester freshman year, and the second half was applied second semester. They didn’t exceed my loans, so I was okay. If your outside scholarships are greater than your loans in a given year, perhaps it’s possible for you to ask the person/organization giving you the scholarship if they can spread it over more than one year. </p>
<p>This is assuming you are eligible for financial aid. If you’re not, I assume that Duke doesn’t care where the money comes from as long as you pay your tuition bill. So, of course, they’d accept money from outside sources.</p>
<p>Barring a material change in your family’s financial situation, your EFC will not change.</p>
<p>Wait,</p>
<p>I’m doing ROTC, and figured that ROTC would cover books, tuition, and fees; and then I could use my financial aid from Duke for Room and Board, is that incorrect?</p>
<p>That is incorrect yes, your ROTC scholarship would count as an outside scholarship I believe. Which means, that if Room & Board is less than your EFC, then you’ll have to pay that out of pocket.</p>
<p>That doesn’t make sense to me though.</p>
<p>Then I could just take the money from Duke, not from ROTC, not serve in the Army, not wake up at 5:30 a.m. for training, and (sort of) pay the same amount for college.</p>
<p>I would think that Duke would REWARD ROTC cadets, by allowing them to attend for almost free, as they are doing extra work, serving in the Army post-grad, etc.</p>
<p>ROTC is government funded. Duke gets almost no benefits from having a few more ROTC cadets as far as I know. Maybe the government subsidizes some programs with connections to the ROTC, but overall, I don’t think it’s a big deal. </p>
<p>As for taking money from ROTC or Duke…that’s really up to you. I know a couple of people that doing ROTC is the only way they can afford to come to Duke. But if Duke is going to give you that much money anyway financially I don’t see the point.</p>
<p>I know I’m going to do NROTC b/c I don’t qualify for Financial Aid but my parents absolutely can’t afford Duke’s tuition. I figured it was about the same for all the other cadets, haha, guess not.</p>