<p>My son is a NM Finalist. One of the schools that offers a Finalist scholarship does not give a full ride, but they say the scholarship can be stacked with any other scholarships or federal need-based aid that he receives. </p>
<p>I'm not sure this makes sense to me. The estimated out-of-pocket expenses that we will have to pay the school are about $8,000 a year. Our Expected Family Contribution (EFC) is almost $14,000. My understanding is that we don't get any government aid until after we have paid the EFC. How is the government going to give my son need-based aid to stack with the NM scholarship, when the amount we owe the school is less than the EFC? </p>
<p>Am I right or am I missing something? </p>
<p>I would appreciate any info. Thanks. </p>
<p>Ummm. Here is the thing. You can get PELL on top of any other awards without any reduction in aid, though most schools will integrate it anyways. The only other federal grant that is out there that I know (though there may some rare bird that I don’t know about) is SEOG and the amounts tend to be small and only some schools will give it out. The rest are loans and work study. You can still get the DIrect loans to pay EFC, just not on a subsidized basis without the EFC paid. So such a student can’t get Perkins loans which are not easy to get anyways and not all schools offer them, and only to enough kids till they run out.</p>
<p>A school can do anything they want with their money. So if your EFC is $14K and the school is giving you enough awards out of their own money so that you are down to $8000 that you have to pay, that just means you can’t get federal subsidized loans and federal work study. But the school can give you another $8K in grants, loans and work study out of their own funds. Heck they give folks with 999999999 EFC money out of their own funds. So what the school is probably saying is that they will give you whatever your package is and replace what you lose in federal funds with their own, and also get the National merit award. I think Oklahoma does do that, and I don’t know what other schools.</p>
<p>I think it is saying they won’t take away the NMF money even if you get outside or Federal money, but maybe only up to the COA?</p>
<p>Say COA is $50k, and the NM money is $40k, leaving you $10k to pay. Your EFC is $14,000, so you won’t get any subsidized federal loans or grants. Your son can borrow the $5500, and you could borrow $4500 as a PLUS loan. If your son gets an outside scholarship of $10k, you can stack that and owe the school nothing. If the outside loan is $15k, they might reduce their NM money by $5k, still leaving you owing nothing, and your son can still borrow $5500 in Stafford loans (unsubsidized).</p>
<p>Some schools don’t allow the stacking, so if the NM money was $40k and he got an outside scholarship of $10, they could reduced the NM money by $10k. This school is saying they don’t reduce, they allow stacking.</p>
<p>" I think Oklahoma does do that,…"</p>
<p>You guessed it!</p>
<p>I think I’m starting to get the idea, although my ignorance is still clouding my understanding. But now that I think of it, the thing to do is probably just apply to the school and see what aid package they end up offering. </p>
<p>Thanks for the help!</p>
<p>Did you get your package yet? It’s impossible to know what a school does internally when they do the package up, integrating internally. They do that because it causes very hard feelings when something is taken away. A parent on the board was quite upset when got a financial aid package of, say $30K from a $60K school , and then won a major scholarship from the same school, and it just came right off the $30k, straight off the grant and he could see it. The school said it came off need and then the kid got a package with as though he had $10K need instead of $30K but who cares, when the result was that he got his scholarship eaten up. A smarter school would have given him the package all at once so it didn’t look like he lost anything. The truly right thing to do, would have been to take the grant money off of the self help and maybe even towards EFC once the federal money was taken taken off and let the kid make out a little, but that is not what Lafayette does. Oklahoma does that. </p>
<p>How much are we talking about anyways with the National Merit award? Also is it for four years, or just the one? I know my kid got, i think a one time $2K award for National Merit. Very much appreciated, and I think his college would have stacked it, had he gotten financial aid, along with the outside award he got as well. But let me tell you, the second year when both awards disappeared, tuitions was increased 4% and the upperclassman suites were about 10-14% pricier than the freshman double, it was a big hit. Though neither the NM award nor the outside award were huge awards, we sure missed them sorely the next year. </p>
<p>No, my son hasn’t even applied yet. It’s past the deadline but they said they would waive it. </p>
<p>I understand what you’re saying. Something similar happened to my older son a couple years ago. He won some “Presidential Scholarship”, which later on was deducted from his need-based aid. </p>
<p>So you would have no idea what their package would have been without the award. It’s not like they are going to show it to you both ways. Oklahoma used to give full rides for NMFs as did a number of schools But as tuition costs skyrocketed and the portion NM kicks in stayed the same (from my day when it was nearly a full tuition award at the same dollar amount), fewer schools do this anymore. Fordham, Alabama and Northeaster are some school that tend to give free tuition to NMFs, Bama is the only one that guarantees it, though the other too pretty much do give it to most all students that do apply on schedule. I have no clue what Arizona and Oklahoma do anymore.</p>
<p>Texas A&M still has a very large automatic NMF scholarship. I believe it would cover the full amount of tuition. They also allow stacking and “match” better offers.</p>