<p>So if Vanderbilt promises money to National Merit Finalists, will this amount be subtracted from the EFC? Or will they just provide less financial aid so that you still pay the same amount? And how do the big scholarships work? If you get full tuition, say through the CV scholarship, then can that cover your EFC? Or will they again just give less financial aid and you still could pay the same? I've searched, but have only found answers based on outside scholarships. Thanks in advance. If I've worded vaguely, I guess I can try to rephrase.</p>
<p>As far as I know, merit money replaces financial aid, dollar for dollar. If is giving you a 20,000 need based grant and you get some random Vandy scholarship for 5,000, turns out you just get a 15,000 need based grant and a 5,000 scholarship.</p>
<p>The exception is when you get a big scholarship, in which case your total aid can surpass your “need.” If you were going to get a 20,000 need based grant and got the full tuition CV scholarship, well, the 20,000 grant goes away completely and you just get tuition paid for by the scholarship.</p>
<p>Outside scholarships work similarly but they are able to contribute something like like $1000/semester before they start eating into the need-based grant.</p>
<p>This has been my experience with the system. For students with financial need, Vanderbilt’s commitment is to meet it. They will not exceed the determined “need” unless some scholarship provides enough money to do so alone.</p>
<p>It feels a little weird for sure, because scholarships you win may not ultimately benefit you, but it does make sense on Vandy’s side.</p>
<p>I can speak a little bit about the NMF scholarship because we went through this with my daughter last year. </p>
<p>Her initial financial aid offer from Vanderbilt included a really nice amount of Grant money and $2,500 in Work Study. When she subsequently named Vanderbilt as her first choice NMF school, she received the $5,000 scholarship for being a NMF. The way it worked out for her was that the extra $5,000 ended up eliminating the $2,500 of Work Study (so she didn’t need to work!) and further reduced our contribution amount by $2,500. </p>
<p>However, I was told that Vanderbilt has an “internal EFC” (my term not theirs) that they have calculated for each student. They will never give you a combination of Grant & Scholarship money that would reduce your obligation below this “internal EFC” amount. The Financial Aid Office told us that the new scholarship money put us right at the minimum “internal EFC” so any additional scholarships my daughter received would simply reduce the need-based grant amount and not have an effect on what we would pay.</p>
<p>My advice is to call the Financial Aid office (once you are accepted and have a financial aid package) and have them run the numbers for you. They were great to work with over the phone and had everything recalculated for me within 15-20 minutes. They’ll be able to tell you exactly how the $5,000 will affect your overall package and what your expected contribution will be.</p>
<p>Yes I did forget to mention that, the scholarship first replaces the work-study portion of your financial aid package (and apparently you can still do work study even after it does so, if you want). Work study is included in meeting need so the scholarship replaces that first.</p>