Financial aid and outside scholarships

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

<p>I read in the "Information for Financial Aid Recipients" booklet that if you win Outside Scholarships,
"you will receive a dollar for dollar reducation in the self-help component of your financial aid package. (Self-help includes expected savings from summer earnings and work-study). University grant will be reduced only after all self-help has been eliminated."</p>

<p>Does this mean that you cannot use scholarships to fill the expected family contribution? I was always under the assumption that any outside scholarships you win would be uised for the amount you still have to pay after the aid award.</p>

<p>Say Penn gives you a $30,000 grant, $3,000 work study, $5,500 federal stafford loan, and expectes $3,000 out of the $18,300 family contribution to be "Expected from Student" (or "expected summer savings).
Say you win $50,000 in scholarships (I know thats alot, but its required for my example). Does this mean that, the $3,000...$5,500....and $3,000 will first be covered, leaving you with $38,500 of your scholarships and still having to pay $13,300. Then, they use $30,000 from your scholarship to eliminate the grant they give you, correct or no? Now you have $8,500 of scholarships. My question comes here; Can you then use that $8,500 to lower the $13,300 you still owe?</p>

<p>And it is more likely that one wont win $50,000 for 1 year. Say one wins $20,000. Does that mean the least you can limit your contribution to in that case is $9,800? (51300 - 30000 (grant) - 5500 (fed stafford loan) - 3000(work study) - 3000 (summer savings))</p>

<p>I know this might be confusing, I just want to understand the outside scholarship/financial aid situation.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>I called before and they told me that outside scholarships cannot fill the family portion so first they take from the student portion, then work study, then whatever grants and scholarships penn gives you, but you still need to do stafford and your parents still need to pay</p>

3

<p>How about Essay Contests? They are technically not scholarships and checks are given to the winners. Are those considered Outside Scholarships?</p>

4

<p>bump
10char</p>

5

<p>anyone for that essay contest question?</p>

6

<p>Penn will remove from your fin. aid money that they receive directly (as is the case in many scholarships). Money that you receive directly from a source, and is otherwise undocumented, is money that Penn does not know about (but then is likely "income" to you which you'll need to pay taxes on).</p>

<p>To the earlier question: The only case where the outside scholarship could pay family EFC is if it is more than the total fin. aid Penn has allocated. This how every fin. aid offering school works.</p>

<p>In general, if you've got fin. aid questions, the best thing to do is call SFS directly. It's a complicated set of rules to navigate :-)</p>

7

<p>? about work study: they include it as part of the package but also want a student contribution. does that mean we have to get a job and save up b4 we start the work study to pay for the s.c.
and for how long do you usually do the work study? i guess i just want an explanation of how it works</p>

8

<p>I'm no expert on work study, but you certainly don't have to get a job BEFORE doing work study. I believe the student contribution here refers to summer wages / other income, while work study is money from a during the school year, on campus job, funded by penn/the government. You'll need to do both (though if you stay on campus and work over the summer, some of that s.c. can come from summer work study jobs too). </p>

<p>Work study is nice because it pays half the wages of a job you get, meaning there are way more jobs open on campus than would ever be normally.</p>