Financial Aid Help Please

Paying for College
1

<p>Anyone willing to help me understand, would be greatly appreciated. </p>

<p>Okay, so I enrolled at Duke and my financial aid package gives me about 19,500 in grant, 3500 in stafford, 500 perkins, 1800 workstudy. </p>

<p>I received a scholarship from duke thats 5k a year so that gets rid of everything except 800 dollars in workstudy. </p>

<p>Now heres the problem i recieved several scholarships:
Burger King: 1000
Wal mart: 1000
Better Business Bureau: 1000
Some leadership scholarship: 1000
and Elks: 1000</p>

<p>Does this scholarship money basically go to waste then? One of the scholarships is giving me a check in my name. BK and Wal mart will mail a check to me but its payable to Duke. BUT, the letter says it can be used toward books? How would I apportion that for books? </p>

<p>Any advice is helpful. I dont want this money to go to waste, especially since I really need it. Paying for duke, even with financial aid is not easy, but their policy is screwing me over.</p>

2

<p>What is their policy on outside scholarships? Can you use the monies to reduce your Stafford, Perkins and workstudy but keep your grant?You can then work at a non workstudy job if you want more money.</p>

3

<p>Call the financial aid office and ask. Different schools handle this differently. The only way to know for sure is to ask.</p>

<p>P.S. Even though you may get a scholarship check made out to you only, please don't neglect to inform the school.</p>

4

<p>When the schools determine your COA they take the cost of books into consideration, so your package probably already considers this. </p>

<p>Like the other posters said, you need to find out how Duke handles the extra scholarship money once they eliminate the $800 workstudy.</p>

<p>I'm not sure if any of your scholarships are renewable, but if they are not I would look into the possibility of asking the scholarship administrators if you can defer payment for future years.</p>

5

<p>Also, find out if any of the scholarship money can be used for things like a new computer. From what others have written here at cc, some universities seem to be allowing students to do that.</p>

6

<p>I'm confused. The COA at Duke is 48,000.00. You have 28,000 in total aid. You still owe 20,000.00 per year. I'm not sure where your numbers are coming from.</p>

7

<p>jude - financial aid is based on COA less EFC. If the OP's 'need' as determined by COA less EFC is $28k then his EFC is probably @ $20k. A lot of schools use scholarship money to reduce the 'need' and therefore this reduces the financial aid package. This is especially the case where federal money is included in the aid package.</p>

8

<p>OK, I was thinking that the 5k scholarship originally mentioned would go towards that 20k, NOT reduce loans, so if it was reducing loans, it was because there was no more money needed to meet COA. </p>

<p>I just got turned around in my process...</p>

9

<p>i called duke financial aid and they basically said there is nothing that i can do.</p>