<p>The school of my choice does not give merit aid, only need-based aid. When you bring in money from outside scholarships, it first comes out of loans and work-study, and then out of the grant money the school gives you, not EFC. So basically, after you remove the need for work-study and school loans, getting scholarships become pointless. What I want to know is if you can ask for more in loans from the school, and then scholarships would extend further.
For example, the school gives you a financial aid package of
$8000 grant
$36000 EFC
$2000 work study
$2000 loans</p>
<p>So only 4000 of your scholarships would make a difference, since you have $2000 in work-study, and $2000 in loans
What I want to do is ask the FAO to turn some of the EFC into loans. If I could do that, then I could use more of my scholarships without losing grant money. Is this possible to pull off?</p>
<p>BTW, I think this system is incredibly dumb. By taking away an equal amount of grant money, they remove the incentive to apply for scholarhips! Maybe if only half of what you get in scholarships was reduced in grants, that would be a good compromise.</p>
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[quote]
The school of my choice does not give merit aid, only need-based aid....</p>
<p>When you bring in money from outside scholarships, it first comes out of loans and work-study, and then out of the grant money the school gives you, not EFC
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes school is meeting your financial need so yes if you have an outside scholarship the amount of money you need from the school has been reduced. Depending on the school you would have to get scholarships in excess of your demonstrated need in order to have your EFC reduced.</p>
<p>Yeah, but if I ask for extra in loans to reduce EFC, then would scholarships reduce the extra loans too? Scholarships reduce loans money before they reduce merit aid.</p>
<p>No, although it is not unusaual for parents/students to borrow money toward paying thier EFC, remember the EFC is determined by the income and assets of your parents and the school assessing what they believe your parents can afford to pay.</p>
<p>Loans taken to pay for your EFC would not be reduced by scholarships unless you have covered all of your demonstrated need. </p>
<p>Schoarship money reduces first the self help portion of your demonstrated need (loans & work study) followed by grant/scholarship money given by the school to meet your demonstrated need.</p>
<p>soccerfanatic, in other words-it won't work. Try again. The only way to reduce the efc amount is to find a school who calculates income or assets differently for your family's particular situation. A simple end run like you were planning ( taking out a lot of non-need based loans to meet efc then using o/s scholarship money to take care of loans) would be snuffed out immediately.</p>
<p>Hehe yeah, I thought so. Oh well. Maybe I can get enough scholarships to cover loans and work-study, financial aid, and THEN efc. lol, I could get like 20k in scholarships, but only save $1-2k. Man. It's almost a gamble, to decide what I want to shoot for, if I shouldn't just stop after I get loans and work-study taken care of.</p>
<p>I think it depends on where the money goes. The school to which I am going next year does the same thing. If the scholarship money goes to the school then the spill-over will take out of the grant, but if the money goes to you instead, you'd be better off. Money saved towards college isn't a huge factor in determining EFC, so if you have the money, then you can simply pay it towards the EFC and your grant will stay about the same. I hope I explained what I'm trying to say well enough; if not, just let me know.</p>
<p>bing, </p>
<p>If a scholarship comes directly to you, are you saying that you have no intention of informing the college that you recieved other outside scholarships?</p>