My daughter has been working her butt off applying for scholarships to supplement the Financial Aid offered from the University she is attending. She just text me and said she needs a letter from a parent substantiating need for financial assistance. Help! What would I put in a letter such as that? Are they just looking for something that says, yes she needs money? Do they want an explanation of why we think she needs money? I just have no clue what they are looking for.
Our gross income between my husband and myself is about $122,000. My husband is a teacher and is also a professional photographer. I work part-time in accounting. We have about $18k set aside in a 529 plan and are fortunate enough to own our home and have one small car payment a month. We do a relatively good job not living beyond our means.
She will be attending Boston University in the fall which gave us a very good financial aid award of about $36k, reducing tuition, room and board to about $36-$37k. So that $18k in her 529 plan isn’t going to go far.
The scholarship, at first glance, doesn’t say it is need based. Just lists other criteria such as GPA, SAT scores, etc. so I can’t really determine if need is a huge factor or not looked at as much?
So any information or advice anyone can give would be truly appreciated!
Did your daughter apply for need-based financial aid from Boston University by submitting FAFSA and Profile? If so and you are looking for more (or some) need-based financial aid, you need to make an appeal to BU. The school probably has an established process for doing this. The questions you ask here need to be addressed to the BU financial aid office.
Edited to add: this may help.
https://www.bu.edu/finaid/apply/special-circumstances/reconsideration/
Sorry, maybe I didn’t explain well enough. The letter is to go with a local scholarship she is applying for. She has been applying to local scholarships to help supplement what BU already awarded her.
Ok, so your questions need to be directed to the folks that run the local scholarship. If you want to write the best letter possible, you need to get the best information possible. That will come from the people who will review your letter, not anyone here on CC.
2 Likes
Make sure the local scholarships will actually lower your COA instead of reducing your need-based aid. See BU’s policy about this.
1 Like
Yes, at a lot of schools, if you get a $5k scholarship on your own, they will lower your need based aid by $5k. It doesn’t help you. Make sure you know how BU handles this before you spend a lot of time going after other scholarships.
It does not appear that a private scholarship would affect her aid she was awarded. The scholarships she is applying for is small.
This is from the BU website.
“Federal regulations require a reduction in aid when total aid from all sources exceeds calculated financial eligibility. Our policy is to help you receive the maximum financial advantage: we will not reduce your BU need-based aid when you receive private scholarships unless required to by this federal law. If a reduction is required, any self-help assistance (subsidized loans and/or Federal Work-Study) will be reduced before your scholarship assistance.”
2 Likes
OP- what happens sophomore year, junior year, senior year? Are the outside scholarships one shot only deals or guaranteed for four years?
Is your FAFSA EFC lower than BU’s net COA of $36K? If so, you could show that difference in the letter as evidence of need. (Yes, I know that BU uses Profile to determine need).
Just trying to come up with a solution that would be easy for OP.