<p>My son is waiting on financial aid packages for several schools, and with our EFC at 6,000 we are expecting a mix of loans, work study and hopefully grants. He is also applying for several local scholarships that will not be announced until June. I know we need to inform the school about any outside scholarships, and that his financial aid could be adjusted. Do schools generally reduce the loans, work study or grants first?</p>
<p>Depends on the school and how deep their pockets are.</p>
<p>Some schools have a policy that they only give up to X amount in “free money” per student so in those cases, institutional grants may get reduced. Other schools may replace loans. </p>
<p>However, since so many schools GAP, that merit may just close the gap a bit. </p>
<p>What schools did your son apply to? Do they promise to meet need? If not, then they may likely gap and the merit would go towards that gap.</p>
<p>You need to ask the FA office of each school. Also, some scholarship may have certain restriction that the amount may reduce if there is other merit aid. For that, you need to check with each scholarship agent.</p>
<p>As others have said, it depends upon the school’s policies. What MOST schools do, is use the scholarship to reduce the self help part of the package, the work study and the loans, starting with the unsubsidized ones. That way, the Direct Loans can then be taken out to pay the EFC, and the student can get a non Work Study funded job. Federal laws do not permit Federal aid (other than PELL) to be given out if the Need is not there, so some of this is due to those rules. Some schools do allow keeping of their own grants, some do not. If the school did not meet full EFC defined need, some allow the scholarships to go there. So it can vary widely.</p>
<p>He’s waiting to hear for Alabama and Michigan State. I suppose this question is more about Michigan State because he has a tuition scholarship to Alabama so there probably won’t be much more coming from them, but he’s always wanted to go to Michigan State. He didn’t get any scholarships there so he shifted his focus to 'Bama. I’m just trying to learn as much as possible so he can make an informed decision when we sit down and look at what each school offers.</p>
<p>billcsho- We are running in to the problem of some scholarships only being offered to students without other scholarships. He has a scholarship to a school 800 miles away, but not one to his first choice school. Don’t get me wrong, we visited Alabama and it’s wonderful. It’s just not his first choice. It’s more like a fantastic 2nd choice.</p>
<p>mom2- We haven’t looked into whether the schools meet full need because for a while we’ve just assumed he would go to Alabama and between the scholarships and our EFC there wouldn’t be much more need to meet.</p>