<p>ive heard that getting outside scholarships will also increase your family's expected contributions. does anyone have experience with this and/or know if its true?</p>
<p>This seems to depend on the school and which outside scholarships, for example, many schools do not count the Byrd scholarship against grants.</p>
<p>Some schools allow you to use outside sources to reduce loans & work study first. Some schools won't allow you to reduce the EFC.</p>
<p>Best to check with the schools.</p>
<p>thx somemom
the school im asking about specifically is stanford. they allow you to use outside scholarships to reduce loans and work study first, and then any scholarships exceeding that decrease the amount of scholarship that stanford gives you
the reason im asking this question is because my mom believes that my applying and getting outside scholarships will increase my family's efc as well, and i was just wondering if anyone knew that was true...</p>
<p>Outside scholarships will NOT increase the EFC at Stanford. My son just graduated from there, so I can speak with some authority on this. My son was able to decrease his loans with some outside scholarships, so they were definitely helpful, but our EFC did not increase as a result.</p>
<p>Of course, your EFC won't DECREASE either. Your family unit is still supposed to cough-up the amount the university thinks it can.</p>
<p>Getting scholarships does not raise your EFC. It is however considered an available resource to the school. This means that however much you receive in outside scholarships will decrease the award by an equal amount from the college. As you have already found out, Stanford will decrease your loans and work-study first. This is not true at all schools.</p>
<p>If you make a compelling case, you can sometimes mitigate the discount the school may apply to your financial award because of the outside scholarships. I had a client two years ago that received $8,500 in outside scholarships and was going to Notre Dame. The school discounted her package by $8,500 (loans, w/s, and free money). After three weeks of faxes, emails, and letters; we were able to reduce the loss to $4,000.</p>
<p>Moral of the story, don't be afraid to haggle if you can make a compelling case.</p>