How does that work? I know it’s when your financial aid exceeds your estimated cost so does that mean the University actually pays the student and not the other way around?? Like what if the financial aid includes loans. Is money still refunded and is it the difference?
I used to get refunds. You have to be pretty poor, in my experience, to get a refund. I commuted to a cc. A state grant paid most of my tuition. The rest was paid by a Pell grant, and I got whatever was left over. It was enough for books and to pay for gas for a couple of months. I still had to work full-time at night to pay for my car insurance, gas for the rest of the semester, car repairs, and other expenses. I didn’t take loans. I lived on what I earned.
You keep making one post threads about finances. Can your parents afford the ~$14k/year net cost of your school on their ~$70k/year income? Does the $14k include the federal student loan? If they can’t afford the school, don’t start there. The best aid goes to freshmen. Transfers don’t get much.
I’m not sure why you are asking. On your other threads, you indicate that you have a $14,000 net cost to pay.
Your financial aid will be used to pay billable costs from your college FIRST. You only get a refund if your aid exceeds those costs.
You likely won’t have any extra money left after your aid pays the billable costs…right?
Therefore, you will not get a refund.
Financial aid cannot exceed your cost of attendance, but not all the cost of attendance is paid directly to the college. The biggest expense is someone living off campus has rent, gas, non-meal-plan food.
If a part of any loan proceeds is disbursed to the student, the student still has to pay it back. It’s not free money. Taking more loans than you need leads to debt, not profit.
One of my daughter gets money back from her school. She has a lot of grants and scholarships. Some of those grants can only be used for tuition, so those all get applied first and the Pell grant and loans are sent to her in a check so she can pay for her rent, utilities and books. Her school chooses to only ‘refund’ federal grants and nothing from the school merit scholarship, from the state grants (bright futures and another).
My other daughter gets just a little bit of money after the tuition is paid. It’s some of the loan money and she uses it for room and board (plus pays a lot from her summer earnings for that too).
No one’s getting rich off the ‘refund.’ Both my kids have loan money in those refunds so it has to be paid back.
^ Pretty similar situation for my D. She got a lot of scholarships and some grant that exceed the tuition and fee even without loan or work study. As she lives off campus, she requested the refund after paying off the tuition and fee so she can pay for the rent with it. The remaining cost is our EFC.
When your aid exceeds the amount of direct costs (tuition, fees, etc) billed by the school.
Yes, if you get a refund (from a source other than loans) you’re kinda getting paid to go to school, though if you’re smart you’re budgeting that money to pay for expenses like rent etc so typically it doesn’t all fly right into your brokerage account or anything.