Does this include all possible scholarships? Or will more scholarships be being released later in the month?
@rach98n Read where it says Decline an offer; it tells you to just set the loan amount to 0.
@mailmeddecisions Merit scholarships will be awarded up till May 1st if you got one. I saw this on Facebook, from somebody who posted an email they sent to the Fin Aid Office
@maheen…omg, I see that now. Thank you for pointing it out! I was so excited by the award that I didn’t read throroughly!
My EFC is 65k per yr which is ridiculous but I still got 12.5k/yr in scholarships from UT and McCombs so I’m happy now. 
@top10grad2019 My EFC is 5.5k and I got like 1.5k more than that, most of it grant aid… 
Our EFC is slightly higher than total cost of attendance (Instate cost) and we were offered only loans
Its sad but lol what can you expect if EFC is higher than total cost 
Is there a way to appeal the financial aid received ? Will UT try to match a financial aid offer from another competitive university ?
@EngHStdt From OSFS FAQ:
Q15: I have been offered a larger scholarship package from another institution. Can UT Austin match the package offered by another university?
A: UT Austin does not match awards offered by other universities.
I would assume you can not appeal financial aid received. Financial aid is calculated based on your FAFSA and merit included in your application. What you have on your FAN is probably what you’re going to get.
Has anyone received a terrible finaid package?
Our EFC was about 8000. We received $2500 in grants, but $5000 in student loans and $20000 in parents’ loans. We already have another child in college, and UT is basically unaffordable right now with this package. We live in TX, and it seems unreasonable to be 50K in debt out of undergrad.
Advice? Would a call to FinAid help?
@mecsquared Our package is terrible. My son is a National Merit Finalist (he just got a scholarship from the NMSC) and we were only “awarded” two loans. I guess we should be happy that he got into the programs he wanted at UT, but every other university is offering some type of scholarship.When you only get loans they should really not sell it as you’ve been “awarded aid”.
@mecsquared @SATX53 I’ve been doing a little digging into financial aid and just comparing apples to apples across schools. So here are my current findings. UT is not known for financial aid. If you get any - you should be grateful. A&M will give out more than UT even going off the same numbers. I’m actually finding many people saying this over the years off of threads on CC plus I’m comparing A&M to UT from our own financial aid.
As a baseline - I believe from what I can see and gather - if your EFC is close to 0 - what will be covered in grants will likely be tuition costs. As your EFC goes up - your Pell Grant starts to disappear as well as that Texas Grant. Of course a lot depends on assets you have as well but in general this is what I’m seeing. In previous years - they gave out other grants/awards but I’m not seeing or hearing of these.
Anyone know about the Top 10% Scholarships and if that is still in existence that I can see was given out years ago in July?
In general from all the schools we’ve applied to - all the financial aid is horrible. Maybe a sign of the times?
Also doesn’t it seem incredibly strange, bizarre and wrong - to be told you can take out a Parent Loan for 10k/year if you have a really low EFC? If you can’t take out a car loan or a mortgage or any other bank loan with a low EFC - how can you get away with borrowing for school? Of course it does say if you aren’t approved for a Parent Loan then your student may be offered another Loan.
Here is our experience. UT gives little aid up front. Since our EFC is $43,000 we got no aid other than loans which we declined. But every year we filled out the FAFSA. My oldest is now a UT senior. Each year she has applied for various scholarships at UT, usually from the liberal arts college which required her to write an essay, submit a faculty reference, and a list of her activities. Every year she got two of these. Usually these were for $1,000 - $3,000. She also got additional scholarships from Plan II. So the moral of the story is that in some cases you can apply for scholarships after you are already at UT and still get money that way.
I spoke to “Amy” in the Student Financial services office yesterday. She said the Top 10% scholarship is not being awarded this year. When I asked about other scholarships for my freshman daughter, she was reluctant to tell me anything. So, I don’t know if any other scholarships are being offered to freshmen besides honors scholarships.
For those of you considering a Parent Loan, please read this article and beware of the negatives of taking such loans: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Parent-Plus-Trap/134844
Regarding grants offered by UT: I inquired as to why my daughter did not get offered the Texas Public Education Grant for Texas residents when A&M offered it to her. The Student Financial services person told me that every college offers different packages. And, yes, A&M did offer us more in grants than UT.
we were awarded the University Tuition Grant which says it’s based on need and merit. Does anyone know the mix? We will have 3 in college in the fall which I’m sure increases our need, but wondering about future awards since it says you are reevaluated each year. We will have 2 in college the following years. UTD offered him full tuition for all 4.
got 10,755 per year
I applied for merit based scholarship but still haven’t heard anything - mystatus just says that they’ve received my application. Have merit awards not gone out yet?