If a college offers a grant and scholarship, will the fund go to the student account first or it will directly pay for the tuition, student fees, room, board etc? Can you share if you ever received grants and scholarship? Please do not answer if you are not interested in or never received scholarship. Thanks for sharing.
Any financial aid your student receives from the college will first go directly to the bursars office to cover billable costs from the college. These are anything the college bills…so tuition, fees, room, board, athletic and student fees, and health insurance if you purchase through the college.
Your kid’s aid is applied first…only one term’s worth at a time. You then are responsible for paying the balance…which needs to be done before your kid will be allowed to register for classes.
If your kid has a surplus in their bursars account after billable costs are paid for that one term…the balance for the one term will be refunded to your kid. This usually only happens if the kid has received a full ride and personal expenses are included in the COA.
But remember…whatever aid your kid receives and refunds…are by the term. So whatever the full year amount is would be divided by the number of terms in the academic year.
Speaking from experience. Both of my kids got merit aid. It was divided by the number of terms and applied to their accounts. So was their Direct Loan money. We paid the balance.
Did your kid receive scholarship, grant and other financial aid that exceeds the costs of tuition, all fees, room and board? If not, you won’t be seeing that money…it will go directly to the college to pay those costs.
Colleges typically invoice each term. If talking about a student with grants/scholarships only (no loans or work-study)…your invoice will be for the net COA that term, which is the total COA for that term (e.g., direct costs like tuition, fees, R&B, insurance) less the grants/scholarships allocated to that term.
Some colleges have payment plans, allowing one to pay monthly, rather than by semester, or quarter and the net price to pay for each payment would be adjusted accordingly.
Your student will also have other costs each term that are not invoiced by the college…such as books, incidentals, etc.
Does this answer what you are asking?
Adding…any balance not covered by the financial aid provided to your kid will need to be paid by you (or maybe grandparents or some other benefactor). The remaining costs are not the responsibility of anyone else.
Hoping these responses answered your question.
My son’s example
Annual Cost of attendance = ~$ 70k
Subtract Sum of scholarships/grants. $ 52,250
Balance, owed by parents: $17, 750 annually
(Not including spending allowance money of $200 per month for incidentals. No car ?).
Scholarships go directly to the bursars office to pay the bill first.
We get a due date, for when our portion of the bill needs to be paid in full, into the bursars office. As soon as the payment is confirmed, my son pushes the “enter” button to view his preselected courses and open the syllabi from his professors.
Not sure what you mean by “student account”. Your student’s account will list the charges and then the grants will be credited out. Neither you nor your student will have acces to the money unless, as stated above, the grants are in excess of the charges.
Grants and scholarships from the college will go towards any outstanding due first and the awards are typically divided up by semester, so if you have a 10K scholarship, you’re not getting it all for Fall semester and nothing for Spring.
DS received a couple outside scholarships and the money is being sent to his high school who in turn sends it to the university to apply to his account balance. It’s not in our hands at all unless the amount exceeds the billable costs.
aunt bea said “Scholarships go directly to the bursars office to pay the bill first.” Does it mean the student shows the Bursars Office bills and then the Bursars Office pays the payee directly and a student pays the remaining balance. A student can show all the bills related to the listed such as Tuition, Student Fees, Room, Board, Books and Supplies and Transportation, Miscellaneous & Loan Fees. Is it correct?
No. The bursar’s office does not give separate invoices for the various cost components, nor does it pay the scholarships directly to the student.
The bursar’s office knows the total direct billed COA for the student (e.g., tuition,fees, R&B, insurance), and automatically subtracts the grants/scholarships from the financial aid office that are specific to that student, then generates an invoice for each student for their net costs…usually per term.
A student pays for books separately, to whatever place they purchase books from, same for supplies, transportation, incidentals. Only direct, university billed costs go thru the bursar’s office.
So, your student will have more costs than just the invoice paid to the school each term.
The bursars office is the finance office. They know what you owe for tuition and room and board already (unless you live off campus). Any financial aid in excess of the direct billable costs (tuition, room and board) will be given to the student.
@compiler the bursars office at a college is the place that prepares and takes payment for your college costs.
They know what their billable costs are…tuition, fees, room, board, health insurance. They take that total and subtract your financial aid from that total.
Then they send you a bill for the balance…which you then have to pay.
Does that make sense?
I’m speaking from personal experience having paid college bills for two kids over a 7 year period…for undergrad.
ETA…if your kid attends a school on semesters, the aid will be divided into two equal parts. The first semester Bill is sometimes higher than the second because some fees are annual fees paid just once.
1/2 of the aid will be applied to the first semester, and half to the second semester.
In my experience they don’t send a bill. You have to log onto the portal to see it.
Tuition, room and board, and fees are all expenses that are billed directly. If the tuition and fees are $50k and room and board is $16k (cost of attendance $66k/year), you’d be billed $25k each semester for tuition/fees and $8k/semester for room and board. That means direct costs per semester are $33k.
Your aid will be split into 2 parts too. So if your student gets $24k in grants from the school per year, the financial aid office will automatically apply $12k to direct costs each semester.
The federal student loan is $5500/year, but only $2750 is applied each semester. This will be done automatically too.
So the balance for EACH SEMESTER would be $33k - $12k grant - $2750 loan = $18,250. You have to pay that up front in August and again in January before your child can register.
That doesn’t include money for books, travel to/from school, and spending money for your child.
For all the info provided the grant/scholarship pays the direct costs such as tuition, room and board and financial office knows those costs. If a student lives off-campus such as in the sophomore, junior and senior year and even freshmen year if allowed, can the grant/scholarship cover the off-campus housing costs? If so, just show the bill or get the reimbursement. Is it correct? In addition, does it matter if the off-campus housing is cheaper than in-campus housing costs by using the financial aid?
You need to check the college on this. Some scholarships are specifically for tuition and can’t be used for any other purpose. You need to find out if your student’s grants or scholarships can cover room and board.
Also, if you submitted your FAFSA and PROFILE saying the student was living ON campus, you need to contact the school and find out what to do to change that to OFF campus. There is usually a different cost of attendance the colleges have for off campus housing and it might be less than for on campus housing. If that’s the case, your need based financial aid award might need to be adjusted to reflect the cost of attendance for off campus.
If your kid decides to live off campus, you should be prepared to pay the deposit, and first/last months rent out of pocket. And the first utility bills. If the financial aid your kid receives is more than tuition and fees (for an off campus kid), the student will receive a refund of the extra financial aid money. But these refunds typically are not given until at least a few weeks into the semester. In other words, you won’t have that money up front.
Also, scholarships/grants that are used for room and board (whether on or off campus) are taxable for the student. Scholarships/grants applied to tuition are not taxable.
are paid by the student, parent or both.
The schools expect that the student has been saving his/her own money, from part time jobs, to help pay for his/her expenses.
We gave each of our kids $200 a month for incidentals because we knew that they had to have money for required items: clickers, batteries, laundry soap, school supplies, grooming items: (shampoo, deodorant, soap, toothpaste ), memory sticks, etc. You don’t make a list of personal expenses and submit the bill to the school for those items. Your refund, if any, is used on those costs. You pay for all of those items.
@thumper1 is absolutely correct:
My daughters roommates got their refunds 3-4 weeks after the quarter started.
I’m adding that living off campus, to set yourself up requires A LOT of CASH upfront and if your “refund” is not enough to cover the costs then the family has to pay those costs. In California, our experience with our kids has been:
-first and last months rent for the deposit,
-plus the current month’s rent.
The apartment owner expects payment from the tenant, not from the school.
Setting up an apartment is expensive. I just paid Wayfair $600 for a couch and kitchen table for my daughter who was assigned to a hospital in Sacramento this month for Covid coverage.
The student also needs to SET UP appointments and pay for:
cable/internet access (monthly)
trash services and trash bins (monthly)
Plus other apartment needs like:
light bulbs
cleansers
brooms/mops/vacuum
bath items (towels, toilet paper)
small appliances, etc.
and
food.
And remember…an off campus lease is often for all 12 months. So in the summer, you will still be paying those off campus costs. Some landlords do not allow subletting.
If your child plans to live off campus, check all the details.
Your kid will either need to cook or buy a school meal plan. Cooking entails having all the kitchen “stuff” plus shopping for groceries and cooking the food.
My kids both lived off campus their last two years. Both attended college in expensive real estate markets. They didn’t save any money living off campus but they both liked to cook and liked their quality of living better than in the dorm.