<p>Hey all, I was accepted through ED and recieved my financial aid info a couple days ago. Am I correct in the assumption that scholarships outside of NU will only decrease the "Northwestern Scholarship" amount supplied, and not my EFC?? If so, what is the point in applying for smaller $1000 or $5000 scholarships, or am I missing something? I would really like to decrease my EFC since they seemed to have missed the mark, but I don't want to waste my time if it only means less grant aid. Thanks!</p>
<p>Appeal the aid decision if it is nowhere near what you think you need. That being said, I have no idea on the EFC question, in fact I’ve wondered that myself.</p>
<p>I am a parent of an NU junior - this is what we were told and actually what happened…Outside scholarships will eliminate the loan and work study as $$$ are applied. After that the Northwestern grant is decreased by the remaining amount of outside scholarship dollars (dollar for dollar). NU is 100% need-based financial aid package based on FAFSA and PROFILE. The family EFC stands…it is NOT decreased from additional outside scholarships. My son had outside scholarships that eliminated the Work Study, the loan and decreased the NU grant freshman year. When the freshman only outside scholarships were not there for sophomore year, the NU grant increased to fill in the gap. Our EFC has been pretty constant as nothing financially for us changed from year to year. Hope this helps. My experience with NU financial aid is that it is fair and very “up front” - I have appreciated that transparency (many other school’s FA offices my S received aid from and was accepted to were vague in communications at times). I have really liked how NU communicates, just as an aside. :-)</p>
<p>BTW - Crimsonstained7…we are from SC…I think I read in one of your posts you are as well? CONGRATULATIONS on your acceptances to everyone - NU is absolutely the educational experience of a lifetime. Our family is so happy to be a wildcat.</p>
<p>t-boneParent it’s great to know someone’s going to NU from SC. You guys from the the upstate? So you can’t get rid of EFC (Unless you got over 60,000 in outside scholarships, haha), but you can get rid of some of the unpleasantries of the financial aid. I guess that means I should get working on getting some outside scholarships.</p>
<p>It also depends on what kind of scholarship you get. If the scholarship comes as a check that is made out to you, then NU doesn’t have to know about it, and it won’t decrease the financial aid from NU. I don’t know how easy it is to find scholarships like this; I’m guessing that most of them will be checks made out to Northwestern, in which case they will decrease your Northwestern aid. However, I come from a small town, and some of the scholarships that local businesses awarded were given as checks addressed to me, not NU, and that was great, because I could put them towards college without decreasing my financial aid.</p>