<p>My daughter has been very fortunate and received a merit scholarship plus a college scholarship to more than cover her tuition. She also received a private scholarship that covers 90% of unmet need. Along with that she has received a number of local scholarships. The kid has basically received more than enough scholarships to cover all of her college cost, but will we still need to pay the EFC?</p>
<p>This is up to the school and probably depends mainly on whether there is any financial aid in the mix. Oh, and just a heads up: if your daughter is receiving grant and/or scholarship money to cover room and board, she will have to pay income taxes on it.</p>
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<p>Only if you accept any federal aid - and many times the school actually decides this by lowering grant aid (need-based aid) they will give. The reasoning is that the “extra” outside $$ coming in means your student isn’t as “needy” as they were without it.</p>
<p>If all of the incoming is merit aid - then you shouldn’t need to pay much/anything. If any is need based aid, you likely will.</p>
<p>Once you have all the scholarships lined up, you need to contact the college/university itself and ask how they will apply this money. Some will let you stack scholarships up to or even past the Cost of Attendance - in other words, using scholarship money to cover your EFC. Others will use the outside money to reduce the students need and part (or even all) of the college’s money will disappear leaving the family responsible for the full EFC. And of course, others will do something else entirely.</p>
<p>If the external scholarships are one year, find out if they can be spread out over all four years instead of being used up at once (for example if there are four one year scholarships, find out if a different one can be used each year for four years). If the scholarships are specifically for books or a computer, the college may not even need to know about them OR the college may be able to write an estimate of the cost of the computer into the Cost of Attendance thus increasing the COA by the amount of that scholarship.</p>
<p>For more ideas on this issue, pop by the Financial Aid Forum and get some advice from the folks there.</p>
<p>You need to call the school and ask. In many cases, you would not have to pay your EFC since the merit amounts are large.</p>
<p>You need to find out if you’ll be allowed to stack all of these scholarships without any institutional scholarships being withdrawn.</p>
<p>We never had to pay our EFC because of our kids’ stacking scholarships. Our EFC is very high (higher than COA), so with all of the stacked scholarships, we ended up paying very little.</p>
<p>This may also depend on the scholarship. You wrote that she won an outside scholarship that covers 90% of unmet need. First, the fact that you’re mentioning need makes me think there is need-based, or grant, aid involved-- which, as has already been explained, can be decreased by the school. But the other thing I want to note is that the one major scholarship I know of that is structured to meet unmet need is the Gates, and the Gates specifically requires parents to pay their EFC as determined by the school. If she won one, congratulations and you can ask specific questions on the Gates forum here but, yes, you will still have to pay your EFC. (She, on the other hand, will have unmet need, loans and work-study covered.) Again, note that she may owe taxes on the scholarship money.</p>