<p>ESTIMATES...</p>
<p>school costs $48,000 total</p>
<p>Financial Aid package: totaling $32,000
- Scholarship $20,000
- Grant $4,000
- Loans $5,000
- Work-study $3000</p>
<p>What's left over (efc) - $16,000</p>
<p>So, what I'm wondering is how outside, private scholarships would play into these figures. </p>
<p>Say I get $12,000 for private, outside scholarships...
would this 12K knock out the grant, loans, and work-study that also totals 12K?</p>
<p>If so...what then happens to "What's left over"?</p>
<p>I'm confused!</p>
<p>If you got an outside scholarship, it would first be applied to the self help portion of your financial aid package (loans/workstudy) . Based on your scenario, you are right after the outside grant knocked out your loans/workstudy they would then remove 4000 from and institutional based aid.
your new package would be:</p>
<p>Outside scholarship 12,000
institutional scholarship 16,000
grant $4000</p>
<p>your EFC would still be 16k</p>
<p>so i would still receive the institutional grant?!</p>
<p>why would my institutional scholarships decrease if it was already given that amount to begin with?</p>
<p>adding on...
- what if i get an extra 5K of outside, private scholarships; how would it now affect my new package, sybbie?</p>
<p>would it now go towards the EFC?</p>
<p>or would it take away the grant?</p>
<p>Different universities have different policies.</p>
<p>what would be more common?</p>
<p>I think what you are trying to find out is how much of a scholarship you would need to lower your EFC -- correct?</p>
<p>usually you have to have an outside scholarship that exceeds the loan/work-study/grants portion of the FA package (basically the whole package) before it will impact your EFC. </p>
<p>One thing to throw in -- if you attend a school that "gaps" or fails to meet 100% of need, outside scholarships will first cover the gapped amount, then the self-help portion of the FA package, then grants and then EFC.</p>
<p>There are several schools that allow outside scholarships to be applied to your EFC before taking away grants -- so it is important to ask questions and not assume.</p>
<p>You ask how the school can take away a grant that they have already allocated to you? well -- that outside scholarship now reduces your demonstrated need -- that is how.</p>
<p>right, i'd like to know how EFC can be lowered...</p>
<p>besides taking away the grant, like sybbie said 4K would be taken away from a 20K scholarship; is that correct?</p>
<p>The outside scholarship won't lower the EFC. The EFC is the EFC regardless.</p>
<p>If the outside scholarship exceeds the self help portion of the package, most colleges will reduce their grant, since your need has been reduced.</p>
<p>What if, then, the grant is wiped out? </p>
<p>Would the institutional's scholarship then be lowered?</p>
<p>Grant and scholarship are really the same, in this (need-based) context. So when I say they'll reduce their grant, it means they will reduce their grant and/or scholarship.</p>
<p>Only way to lower your EFC is probably by showing either an error in the input and correcting it? Proving that you have other extraneuous circumstances such as high med bills, or lost your job...and the like.</p>
<p>Otherwise, you dont get a redo on the FAFSA. Thats why I personally agonized over the calculators on finaid, and tried to determine what exactly would make the most sense in terms of balancing say taxable (or potential future taxable)events (distributions of UGMA, reporting of savings bonds regarding ownership, savings accounts in minors names) prior to doing the FAFSA.</p>
<p>At the end, I really decided to just grin and bear it. Most of our EFC came because of AGI....I make too much money to have a low EFC. It is what it is. Although I wish my DS was in a position to get a $12,000 O/S Scholly, the chances of that are pretty slim.</p>
<p>Although DD is a great writer. Perhaps SHE will position herself to get some.</p>
<p>some schools do allow outside scholarships to be used for EFC -- I don't know off-hand what those schools are (I don't believe any top 25 schools). You might do some checking on schools that you are interested in.</p>
<p>Otherwise -- your EFC is what your parents and you are going to have to pay. </p>
<p>Understand that if you get a scholarship that reduces the need for loans and workstudy -- you can still get a job and borrow money and use it towards the EFC.</p>
<p>Each school will handle outside scholarships differently...For example, at our instution, our aid covers up to the cost of attendance. Part of this may be in private loans, but if there are enough grants/scholarships/Stafford Loans to cover the cost of attendance, then a student would not have to take out any loans. Then again, our methodology of calculating awards differs greatly from some of the schools I have seen here.</p>
<p>so really, the only great deal on getting outside, private scholarships is to basically lower the student's loans/grant/work-study monies? </p>
<p>so the way i'm looking at this is pretty much there is a limit on which the student can get for outside scholarships? such as in my example at the top, a student should only focus on getting 12K of outside scholarships?</p>