Some schools, including the one I will be attending, claim to meet full need. This can be done with grants, loans, work study, and then the parent contribution.
Now, if a student gets a scholarship, instead of going towards the parent end, it goes towards the loans. Okay. If there are no loans (like mine) it goes to work study. If that is also covered, instead of going to the parent part, it then cuts into grants.
Is this fair? If a student earns a scholarship for theirself why should it be detracted from the money the school gives them?
Disclaimer: I did commit to this school knowing this, so it’s not an end of the world deal breaker for me clearly. But I am wondering if other people feel it is a fair way to go about the financial end of tuition.
Whether it’s fair or not is irrelevant- those are the rules. Your parents are expected to pay their EFC. You did not have to attend this school that meets full need. You could have searched for very large merit awards and possibly gotten a lower price elsewhere.
And… Be glad that your parents can afford their EFC. Many can’t.
It seems pretty reasonable to reduce loans and work study first - that’s money you don’t have to borrow or work for. A nice payoff for the work of getting the scholarship.
I personally would like to see my D’s school reduce her student contribution expectation from summer work - some schools will do that. But hers also goes to loans then work study then that’s it.
Is It fair that you get to take FA away from kids that need it? At your age you should have a much bigger picture about equal access to education. Share it around.
This is pretty simple, and it is fair. Need-based aid means that if you have less need (because, for instance, you get more money from an outside scholarship), you don’t require as much aid.
If a person qualifies for food stamps because they are poor, and then get a job and earn more money-- they will lose their eligibility for food stamps because they are no longer poor enough to qualify.
In this case the college is looking at your & your parents earnings and assets and saying-- hm, ok, you onliy have $X, therefore you need $Y to attend college-- and because they promise to meet need, they reduce the amount that they are giving you. In this case they are also kind enough to say that they will let you use that money first to replace loans and work study, before cutting their own grant.
It’s really simply math-- if the college has determined you need $50K to attend school, and a private agency gives you $10K,… then your remaning need is $40K.
So how is that in any way unfair? You haven’t been hurt – if you needed $50K then you are still getting $50K, it’s just that some of it is coming from a different source.
I think the problem is the order they do things. They first decide how much need you have and figure out how much they will give you. Then you tell them how much you received in outside scholarships and then aid is adjusted. So it really feels like the school is taking away something that was given to you. Unfortunately, I don’t see a better way to do it. Not everyone is going to know the outside scholarships awarded early enough.
The issue is that if you attend a school that meets full need, you need to pay your EFC. I think it is very generous in this case that the school will apply the scholarship to the students work study- there was no loan given. The grant was not touched.
I also say - again- that this student is lucky that his parents can afford their EFC. Many students who get into schools like this can’t afford to go because their EFC is too high.
One other point to make. If you attend a school that meets full need, you never really have tuition increases. If you assume all things stay the same financially for your family, your EFC will not change. If the school raises tuition by $2,000, then your aid will increase by $2,000.
My son is in the same situation. I did feel it was a bit unfair, even though I fully understood it. However, it was really nice to know we won’t be paying more in the future. These are all part of the dynamics of a school meeting full need.
You seem to misunderstand the definition of “need.” You seem to assume that it’s static. It’s not. The school gives you what you “need” to attend that school (let’s say $1000 for ease of calculation). You then find a scholarship that gives you $100. That means that you now “need” only $900 more from the school to attend.
Why do you think it’s fair for the school now to give you MORE that you actually need? Isn’t it fair for the school to give that $100 to someone who still “needs” it?
The “scholarship displacement” debate is interesting. Its like the unpaid internship debate.
In a bubble everything looks fine and logical. Then you introduce issues of SES disparity (and one person benefitting more than another due to higher SES) then (some) people start to see issues.
(Not making a judgement. Just saying I can see both sides on both those issues.)
I do understand the family/student’s argument that the school says “It costs $50k to attend. We can give you $20k in grants, $10k in loans, but feel you can pay $20k, and you need to figure out how to pay that amount.”
So the student thinks “I’ll pay my portion by applying for and winning scholarships” and gets a $10k scholarship. The school now says “Great, we’ll only need to give you $10k, you can still borrow $10k, and still pay $20k.” If the same student scratch a winning lottery ticket for $10k, he’d get to use that toward the family $20k obligation, or if he earned the $10k, or even if Grandpa gave it to him for having the best gpa among the cousins.
But really, the school is trying to be fair. The ‘grant’ money was really given because the student was smart enough to get into that school that meets full need. The school gets to set the rules and many are quite generous and remove the loans and work study first (so student can still get that loan or still get a job off campus).
Some really nice scholarships are ‘last dollar.’ They want the student to get all the money they can from other sources and then pay what’s left. I know a student who got one of these and went to Yale. I’m sure they figured out who paid what and it was still better for the student to have won the scholarship than not, even the the net to the student was probably the same.
DS’s school applied outside scholarships this way. Look at it this way, by reducing the loans you personally need to take out, they are giving you financial freedom sooner. Yes, parents still have an obligation and the scholarship applied this way helps the student directly. I wish my DS didn’t have any student loans after we paid out EFC.
