<p>if a private university deems our EFC is $40k and my child receives a total of $20k in outside private scholarships, that $20k goes to the university and not subtracted from our EFC correct?</p>
<p>And does your EFC changes every year meaning you fill out a FAFSA and/or CSS Profile every year and start over again looking for scholarships?</p>
<p>If your child gets $20,000 in outside scholarships…that usually reduces your financial need…and therefore reduces your need based aid. The private scholarships seldom reduce EFC…that family continuation is what the school,expects YOU to contribute.</p>
<p>Need based aid is computed annually. You would need to check YOUR college to determine what returning students need to submit and when. It varies from school to school.</p>
<p>Some schools will apply the outside scholarship to unmet need and/or replacement of the student contribution (student loan or work study) before reducing financial aid grants. Check each school to see if it does this.</p>
<p>Here is an example: <a href=“Outside Awards : Stanford University”>Page Not Found : Stanford University;
<p>Please tell me where you found 20K in outside scholarships! My daughter has been using FastWeb which has produced nothing. She’s in the sciences. Please tell me where!</p>
<p>@proudfather </p>
<p>@Rdtsmith may be asking IF her child were to get $XX in merit. It is extremely hard to get good-sized multi-year awards from private entities. </p>
<p>Thank you so much and luckily there are some specific military affiliated scholarships that are VERY generous, so it’s a likely amount. I did some digging…can’t remember if it was Stanford or somewhere else, but they actually had a chart showing different levels of amounts of private scholarships and it showed work study went away first, then student contribution, then parent. Federal aid stayed the same in all four scenarios.</p>
<p>And those scholarships you have to apply yearly unfortunately:-(</p>
<p>^^Not necessarily. There were several military ones in our community, either for children of military or just given by military groups, that were 4 year renewable. There are some science ones that for 4 years.</p>
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<p>What federal aid are you talking about? If a student is entitled to the Pell Grant, they get that regardless. But what other federal GRANT aid would stay in place guaranteed? The only other federal grant I can think of is SEOG and that isn’t guaranteed for all students who apply.</p>
<p>I wish I remember what webpage I saw this. It was a chart with three or four scenarios. Last line was “federal aid” and that amount stayed the same in all the scenarios whereas the others were all reduced starting with the first category I mentioned on down. Let me see if I can find it. Thought it was on stanfords financial aid pages.</p>
<p>Yes grants. Anyway chart helped me how to understand outside scholarships better. <a href=“Outside Awards : Stanford University”>Page Not Found : Stanford University;
<p>So only student contribution is affected and not EFC. If the EFC seems too high for the parents for whatever reason, it won’t change unless the parents take out loans or sell their home or whatever to come up with that money, correct?</p>
<p>Isn’t the student contribution considered a part of the EFC, or not? That Stanford page has no loans in any of the scenarios. At many schools the outside awards will reduce/eliminate the student’s expected contribution from both work and loans, and possibly also unmet need, before they start cutting the university grants. So if there were a $5500 student loan in the calculations, that might also be eliminated. That is reducing the EFC, just not the parent part of it. And the student can work and earn money anyway, just not with work study. If the student works anyway and pays that money towards college, that reduces the needed parent contribution. Up to say $10,000 or so of outside awards can be a real benefit, depending on the original package. After that, the scholarship has to be big enough to also replace any university need-based grant before it begins to benefit you directly by reducing your parent contribution. But call each school to ask about policy, as ucbalumnus says.</p>
<p>Um…the $5500 Direct Loan can be used to reduce the family contribution.</p>
<p>It depends upon the school as to how outside scholarships will be applied. There are some school that will take that the outside award and replace a school grant with it FIRST. Yes, I’ve seen that, and at some schools doing this their web site makes it clear that the grants are solely for financial need and will be so reduced.</p>
<p>Typically, what I have seen, (and Stanford is not typical from what I’ve seen), schools will take the outside scholarship and apply it to the self help part of the package first. Workstudy, Direct Loans (unsub first, as some schools will put unsub direct loans in an aid package), subsidized loans, grants and only reduce the student and parental EFCs once the aid package is depleted, with the exception of PELL which can remain. If the Direct loan is replaced, the student can then use it on an unsubsidized basis towards the EFC.</p>
<p>But some schools will permit stacking of scholarships. Though federal aid cannot be given until a family pays the FAFSA EFC, the school will allow the students to keep whatever grants they give, treating them as merit instead of need grants. So in such cases, the federal (and sometimes state) funds will be reduced, the school grants will remain intact and the student can possibly double dip.</p>
<p>Again, it all depends upon the school. </p>
<p>Ah interesting…ok that clears things up thank you!</p>
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<p>Generally, student contribution (i.e. student loans and/or work study and/or expected student work earnings) is not part of EFC. For a school that meets full need, the net price will be EFC (usually defined by the school) plus whatever the school’s expected student contribution is.</p>
<p>Here is another example of how a school handles scholarships as they affect need-based financial aid:
<a href=“Scholarships”>https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/financial-aid/types/scholarships/</a></p>
<p>Of course, different schools may have different policies.</p>
<p>Also, if a student can earn two different scholarships, the resulting amount could either be the sum of the two scholarship amounts, or the larger of the two scholarship amounts (since sometimes a student is allowed to earn at most one of several scholarships in a given list).</p>
<p>I see. Thanks. I guess the F in EFC threw me off. But I suppose that EFC considers student assets and that is why it’s an F and not a P. We never pay any attention to anything but the grant part of packages. Kids will work in any case. The (tuiton-fees-rm-bd-etc) - (grant-scholarship) number is the bottom line for us. I really don’t understand these things very well at all.</p>
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<p>This would be the net price. It may be divided up differently between EFC, student loan, and student work by different schools; each individual student and family may come up with its own division into various components.</p>
<p>Of course, independent students may be treated differently, in that there is not a separate expected family (i.e. parent) contribution, so that the family contribution is the student contribution.</p>