Scholarships at Brown

<p>I’m going to Brown as an ED applicant, and I found out this year that I’m a Coca-Cola Scholar ($10,000 scholarship) and I just recently also found out that I’m a Toyota Community Scholar (additional $10,000). My question is: How does Brown handle outside scholarships? I know some schools “displace” funds… in other words, they will take the value of your scholarship and remove funds from their own Brown scholarships and/or loans. What does Brown do??? Anyone have any experience with this?</p>

<p>That's what most schools do. But for an important question like this, I suggest you get the facts directly from Brown. Go to their Financial aid website and they will have a place that tells you exactly what they do with outside scholarships. This is quicker and more reliable than asking folks in cyberspace.</p>

<p>Almost all schools directly take that money out of the Financial Aid package, depending on the nature of hte scholarship. If it must be used to pay for undergraduate and is given directly to the school, then this will almost certainly be the case. Since there are no real scholarships at Brown, just Financial Aid, the position is that they are providng you with money to meet your demonstrated need, however, this additional 20k (congratulations btw) has lowered your demonstrated overall need and therefore Brown does not view this as money you need anymore, and use that money for someone else who demonstrates additional need.</p>

<p>You can use it for a one-time purchase for a computer if it starts taking away your grants. But congrats!</p>

<p>Some schools, like Vanderbilt for example, realize that if outside scholarships only take away from grant money, then the student has no motivation to obtain those outside scholarships. So vandy uses them to take away self-help and then efc. Maybe Brown does that?</p>

<p>congrats on those scholarships! that's amazing!</p>

<p>It sounds nice, but I am almost positive that Brown takes it out of the grants. Financial aid in this country screws the middle class. My family, which is very much middle-middle class saved a ton of money for me over the years for college through tax free funds and zero-coupon bonds purchased around the time I was born, etc. For that, we essentially found out that we have an EFC equal to the cost of school, and, if you remove our savings that were specifically for college, I would have received all the money we saved in financial aid. So, while I am sure the money saved would have gone into the equity of my family in some other way, essentially, everything my parents saved for college could have been spent and the government would have picked up the bill. Instead, my parents have to liquidate both my college savings and their own to send me to school because that's what they think is reasonable-- goose eggs in the bank for all by the time you leave.</p>

<p>::shrugs::</p>

<p>Here is your answer: It will displace the funds you get, but it will first displace loans, then grants.</p>