So, I was looking through Financial aid info at some different schools and noticed that Amherst will allow, with the organizations permission, an outside scholarship in excess of work-study to be used to purchase a computer for school. Does anyone know of other colleges that would allow this? Has anyone done this before? I am very curious if their peer institutions will allow it also. Anymore, a laptop for college is all but a necessity and my family probably won’t be able to afford that.
There have been posts over the last year that Harvard and a few other schools do not start reducing institution’s aid until a certain point has been reached in outside scholarships, I think about $6000. Even schools that meet 100% of need expect the student to contribute something, and it seems they are willing to consider these outside scholarships as the ‘something’ to cover the start up costs.
Can you buy your own laptop with money from your summer job?
I know some colleges will make a COA adjustment for one year laptop purchase, see if this illuminates that method:
http://www.finaid.org/educators/pj/costofattendance.phtml
My S was able to do so at Princeton. I remember specifically that Williams, Harvard and WUSTL had similar policies. You would have to check each school’s outside scholarship policy, but it seems common practice amongst the “meet full need” type colleges.
You mentioned work study, but you will have a student contribution and often a loan as well, so the outside scholarships will apply to all of those obligations before a computer purchase comes into play.
Thanks everyone! I don’t know if I will have enough money for my summer job because my family kind of depends on my income to a certain degree and it is more important that my siblings can be taken care of. I am applying to a LOT of outside scholarships and my grades and test scores are very competitive. Because I was in foster care for a while I also can get scholarship aid from some unusual programs that are going to have a lot less applicants.
S1 was at a full-need met college and they allowed him to use scholarship funds to purchase a computer. Several of his smaller scholarships allowed hits. This was in 2007-08.
D’s school this year would not raise COA to include a $1,200 (their specs) computer. Neither would her Community Foundation allow the funds to be used for technology. I am definitely going to allow this when I get rich and give scholarships–it’s a large first year necessary expense. Yes, there are cheap laptops available, but often schools give specs for more expensive models.
Yeah I noticed that many of the programs I am interested in have bare bones spec requirements that are going to cost about 1200 and this is pushing the low end of what I’ll need to function optimally especially for all four years.