<p>If one gets outside scholarships, can this reduce the parent contribution? How does Stanford's fin. aid program work?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>if they were going to offer you $40,000 in aid, but you get a scholarship for $10,000 (recurring annually) they will offer you $30,000 in aid, etc. </p>
<p>so i suggest you don’t report the cash scholarships 
(and not get caught of course, because that would suck and you would lose all aid)</p>
<p>Almost all reputable scholarships pay directly to the school. Not reporting it is not an option. I believe that outside merit scholarships and winning essay type contest scholarships CAN be used to offset your/parent share because they were not accessible to the school to assign and you would not have them except for your own efforsts. For example, as the dependent of disabled military, I have a benefit at a California public university that is used in the university’s calculation to directly meet the parent cost.</p>
<p>do we have to write down the name and the amount of the possible outside scholarship on our financial aid form (even if you don’t think you’ll get that scholarship)?</p>
<p>When and if you get extra money, they send it to the school long after your financial aid forms are completed. Sometimes there is actually more $$$ coming in than you owe the school. Yes, it can happen. In that case, the school can apply it to the next year’s tuition or refund it to you for other expenses like books and off campus living expenses.</p>
<p>Thanks Compsci</p>
<p>You’re right…lot of these outside scholarship results are announced after May 1st.</p>
<p>As far as I know, outside scholarships can NOT reduce parental contribution because Stanford has technically met 100% need. They can reduce student summer contribution and term-time work and/or loans, however.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that outside scholarships can’t reduce the parent contribution. As for reporting scholarships, there is an outside scholarship form that comes with the acceptance package (and is online), and on this form you must write down the scholarships you were awarded as well as how much they were for. The outside scholarship form is due the end of July. It can be found at: <a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/pdf/09OutsideNotif.pdf[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/pdf/09OutsideNotif.pdf</a></p>
<p>Outside scholarships definitely do not reduce the parent contribution at Stanford. They can and do, however, reduce the student contribution. So whatever compromises the student contribution, i.e. the $4500 from summer and academic year earnings and the 5% of assets in the student’s name, will be reduced by the amount of outside scholarships.</p>
<p>If the outside scholarships equal more than the student contribution, the Stanford FA (called Stanford Fund Scholarship) is reduced by that amount. [Outside</a> Awards : Stanford University](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/aid/outside/index.html]Outside”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/aid/outside/index.html)</p>
<p>Gladmom, that does make sense since Stanford is all residential as opposed to the UC’s where housing is not necessarily included. So at Stanford, they could easily apply the scholarship to living expenses directly. I was lazy in writing “your/parent” share because I made the false assumption that for many people, there is a blurred line between the two categories. Families with big bucks may pay the student share for them and families that are struggling may need more contribution from the student. You are of course right that it formally applies to the student share. However, it also true that some people who are very aggressive in pursuing private scholarships do end up getting more money than the actual cost that the college charges directly within one year. My cousin, (darn him) got an actual check from his college for the excess, albeit the college was not Stanford. Some scholarship entry forms even state that the proceeds can be “banked” at the college and applied to future terms at the same school, in which case they would no doubt be taken into account when calculating that next term’s aid package, but should still offset student share, not grant money. Those scholarships tend to be the ones that are sponsored by private industry companies and are usually open to high school applicants in all grades. My cousin started obsessively applying to every scholarship contest he could find starting in 9th grade and by the time he applied to college, he had quite a patchwork of awards lined up but still got a reasonably good need based offer from the colleges he applied to, but with no loans or student share and yes, they were all reported. Maybe that was because his parents’ share would have been incredibly low to begin with based on income.</p>
<p>Have any EA applicants received the final finaid estimate yet?</p>