<p>While perusing Harvard's financial aid booklet, I came across something that may end up changing my entire game plan in terms of financing college.</p>
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Harvard's outside award policy is to use the full amount of outside awards first to replace your term-time job expectation and then your summer earnings expectation. When outside award totals are greater than these expectations, the excess amount must be used to replace an equal amount of Harvard scholarship. (p. 8)
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<p>So am I interpreting this correctly? Say (and these are hypothetical figures) that a student's term-time job expectation is $2,500, and the summer expectation is $1,000. If that student gets $10,000 in outside awards, then $6,500 of it would be absorbed by the college?</p>
<p>If that's the case, it seems like a waste of time to apply for more scholarship money... But I hardly blame them. Harvard is still only charging half of what any other school is charging me.</p>
<p>Well, if you're talking about $10,000 per year (aka, $40k total)then yes much of that money will go back to Harvard. If it's a $10,000 lump sum try talking to them and seeing if they can defer payment of whatever would be re-absorbed by Harvard until the next year, and then repeat the process again for the year after next. I think it's pretty rare to find someone who has to give back too much money to Harvard as long as their outside scholarships are flexible about timing.</p>
<p>This is the policy at every university, because the universal means of determining aid is the total cost of attendance less an expected family contribution that's based on the student's available resources. When you find more resources, it reduces the gap that fin aid has to close. It's frustrating when it's applied to your own case, but if you think about it objectively, the concept makes sense. But as h-bomber says, Harvard is pretty flexible about allowing your donor(s) to defer.</p>