<p>If I'm applying to schools that meet 100% of need, assuming I get in, is there a point to applying for external scholarships at all? Will the colleges just add that to the EFC and give less aid, equaling it out in the end?</p>
<p>It depends on the school, many of them will do what you stated. You should check the website for the college and ask the financial aid office if you don’t see the answer. Some schools will offset loans first (so reducing your debt). I assume you are aware that need is calculated on the college’s viewpoint of your need, not your family’s viewpoint, and even 100% need colleges sometimes leave more than a family thinks it can pay in the cost of attendance number.</p>
<p>You’re making a big assumption that you will get in to a full needs met school.</p>
<p>Some schools will apply outside scholarships first to the student contribution (i.e. work or loan expectation) before reducing other need-based aid. For example: <a href=“Outside Awards : Stanford University”>Page Not Found : Stanford University;
<p>Yes, there is a value to that, because the outside scholarships can reduce the amount of loans that you have to take.</p>
<p>It’s also very possible that the outside scholarships can increase the total amount of aid that you get, because of the differences in FAFSA calculation of need and the college’s own determination of need – those numbers can sometimes be very far apart.</p>
<p>So for a simple example – let’s say that a college costs $50K.
Your FAFSA EFC is $10K, but your parents own a house, and with the home equity counted as a resource, the college decides your family can pay $20K.</p>
<p>The college gives you a full need award that looks like this:</p>
<p>$25K college grant.
$3500 subsidized federal loan
$1500 work study
Bill to parents: $20K</p>
<p>You get an outside scholarship for $5K, and report it to the college.</p>
<p>The college applies that amount to the loan/work study part of the award – so now you have a grant-only award. With the outside scholarship factored in, your parents still get the same bill.</p>
<p>But because the college’s determination of need is higher than your FAFSA number – you are still eligible to take out federal subsidized loans. So even though the college does not require you to take the loan – you have the option to borrow anyway. So you keep your scholarship, keep your college grant, then take the same loan you would have taken without the scholarship – and now the bill to your parents is $16.5K instead of $20K. </p>
<p>It really depends on the school. Our experience was that the outside scholarships decreased the amount of the grant and increased the amount of our loan. (i.e. the scholarship began at $33K, then we reported $6K in outside scholarships, and the school reduced the grant to $27K so we have to come up with an extra $6K in loans.)</p>
<p>I understand that the college has a large percentage of aid they provide to their students so they want to “spread the wealth”. So, in our case, there was no point in applying for the outside scholarships, other than prestige?, because it didn’t help us; it just added more to our parent loan.</p>
<p>In my D’s case, the school just took out the same amount of external scholarship from the grant. At the end, we are paying the same.</p>
<p>You have to call. I called the College of Wooster about this the other day and their policy was to allow the outside scholly to go to any unmet need first, then they applied it to work study and loans, and only to their grants if they came into a situation where the outside scholly pushed a family over COA.</p>
<p>This happened to a friend. They didn’t accept a Direct Loan. When they got the outside scholarship…there was NO loan to eliminate. Oops. They were advised to immediately accept the direct loan…and the school reduced their loan by the outside scholarship amount…it was not dollar for dollar.</p>
<p>YMMV depending on the school, and it’s policies. You need to contact the schools.</p>
<p>Many of the schools publish their policies. Every school that my kids applied to would apply the scholarship dollars first to the self-help part (work-study and loans)-- and only reduce grants over those elements financial aid were exhausted. So you might consider the school’s policies as part of the selection process – you are going to be relying on a school’s need-based aid for 4 years, and they are reducing grant dollars based on outside funds it could be a problem in later years as well.</p>
<p>I’d add that if the school is not meeting 100% of need, then in theory they shouldn’t be making any reductions at all, at least not until you reach the point where your need has been met. </p>
<p>In other words, let’s say that you are attending a FAFSA only school that has given you a $10,000 grant and $5000 loans toward meeting need, when based on your EFC you would need $25,000 in grants and loans to cover your expenses. So you have a gap of $10K. You should be able to fill that gap with outside dollars without penalty.</p>
<p>I am not saying that is what the college will do. Some colleges have terrible financial aid policies. </p>
<p>I’m just saying that when you are evaluating the quality of a college’s financial aid, that is something for you to look at. </p>
<p>If they screw you coming in, it’s not likely to get better as the years go by. </p>
<p>It depends partly on whether you’re talking federal or institutional aid. If it’s federal, they may be required to take certain actions. For example, I had a full tuition scholarship, so I only had some federal aid. When I reported my outside scholarships, I was no longer eligible for work study.</p>
<p>One of my kids, in a full-need school, had her loans reduced by an outside scholarship.</p>
<p>The other, in a full-need school that has no loans in the FA award, had his work-study reduced an outside scholarship.</p>
<p>So it depends on the school and your financial situation.</p>