This is my first attempt at the college
application and financial aid process
as a parent. If one of the more
prestigious scholarships, for example a presidential scholarship is offered to a student who is selected for
admission , but that student decides
not to enroll at the college, what
happens to that scholarship? Is it
unawarded ? Is it offered to another
student or distributed as other aid?
Excuse my ignorance on the subject,
I never really thought about this before, and it has me curious.
It depends on the school and I am not sure they always share that information. I’m curious what it would matter to you anyway?
It really depends on the school. In some case, they have the yield rate factored in. In other case, they will re-distribute the fund. For large scholarships, they usually have a backup list.
As noted, it all depends on the actual scholarship award. Even at the same school, some awards might have back up offers waiting in the wings, and others might now.
Many/most schools use models that tell them how many scholarships they can award to get X number of acceptances.
So, when they award 100 Presidential scholarships, they already know that only about X students will enroll.
So, the money from the students who didn’t enroll really never existed.
However, in some cases, a school that has very limited funds, and only awards a small number of scholarships (say 5 endowed awards), that school may only award 5, and if only 3 enroll, then they may either find 2 other students to award the money to, or save the money for a future year.
Why would this matter?
@ Brown Parent and @Madison 85 I was wondering if those scholarships went undistributed or if they were offered to other students to provide other financial opportunities for students who may not have been awarded scholarships but qualify.
@ billscho thank you. That’s what I was asking regarding a back up list.
My son was offered a full tuition scholarship at Denison. The offer came with a request to give them an answer within a week so that it could be offered to another applicant if he turned it down. I’m pretty sure that someone before my son had already declined it because it was offered to him quite late in April and he had already accepted another school’s offer.
Maybe not OP’s intent, but I read the question as concern for other applicants if her child is awarded merit money from a school they don’t end up attending. My D’s applications went to larger schools who likely treat scholarships as @mom2coIIegekids described first. But if a student applies to a number of schools in which they’re not particularly interested–whether because they’re applying to lots of safeties, “casting a wide net” to compare merit offers, or just want some bragging rights–and then racks up a bunch of scholarships that they can’t possibly use, do other applicants “suffer”?
@carolinamom2boys Are you worried that your child’s awards from schools that he won’t attend will “be wasted”?
Or…are you wondering if someone else’s awards that didn’t get used could be awarded to your son?
At my kids’ undergrad, there are a couple different types of awards…
-
the type that use the model where they over-award knowing that only some-known fraction will attend. So, “declined awards” don’t go anywhere. However, if the models were wrong and fewer students accepted than anticipated, then the school reserves that money for a future year when the opposite might occur.
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the type that alumni has endowed a “set number” of awards (10), and when those students who are offered declined enrollment by May 1st, the awards are re-offered shortly thereafter. Likely there is a “back up list” that they go to.
Im wondering if my son may be eligible for awards that weren’t used by someone else may be awarded to my son if he met criteria . I didn’t know if after an initial merit scholarship was offered if the school would ever come back and offer additional merit aid or substitute one scholarship with a different higher monetary scholarship. It sounds like each school varies. Thanks everyone for you info.
@carolinamom2boys If your son’s test scores are well-within the top 15% of the school, then call admissions or scholarships (not FA dept) and ask if there’s any unawarded merit that your son could be considered for.
For instance, if the middle quartiles for the school is ACT 25 - 30, and your son has an ACT 33/34+, then ask.
For large scholarships (typically with the donors’ names), the school really want to distribute them as the school may need to report to the donor. For smaller scholarships or money from a pool under the school’s control, then they may let the unused money stay in the account for the next year.
I know that my daughter did a supplement for one of two possible full rides at one school. She was on the short list, but the two kids offered ahead of her accepted and so she was out of luck. The administrator of the scholarship was kind enough to email his regret.