S has applied to a number of schools, and has been fortunate enough to receive a number of very nice scholarship offers already, with a number still pending.
Here is the issue: He is likely to receive a “private” scholarship through my wife’s employer, likely to be $5K per year/4 years.
How is that handled? Do schools correspondingly reduce their own scholarships that amount, can you stack them with their own scholarships offers, or what? If they want to reduce their offer by $5K, is that something that is typically negotiable?
I think it depends on the school but it’s certainly common for schools to reduce their aid package by the amount of the outside scholarship. Sometimes they’ll reduce aid but offset loans and work-study first, which, although not as good as stacking, at least is better than offsetting grant aid. If your son does receive the scholarship from your wife’s employer, I suggest that you contact each of the schools he’s considering and ask how the scholarship will affect that school’s FA package. Good luck!
for merit only awards, usually stacking is allowed.
HOWEVER, and you need to check, some schools have policies that only a certain max amount can come from merit and they will start eliminating THEIRS so that they can spread the merit around. So, if a school has a policy that merit can’t exceed tuition (not COA…tuition) and your child’s awards total more than tuition, then that school will reduce its award to get the total down to tuition. Obviously if ALL the merit came from outside, then the school won’t adjust.
So the consensus is that if you get a partial scholarship (not full tuition), that you will be allowed to stack an outside scholarship with a school-funded scholarship. But we should double check.
Anyone else have an opinion or experience on this issue?
Most school websites show what their rules are. Ones we’ve looked at most apply additional scholarships to work study, then student contributions and then after that whittle away at the college’s contribution. Never your EFC…unless you get no aid from them of course.
In our case, stacking of merit scholarships was allowed. Each of my kids had 2 school merit awards plus one outside merit. They did not get need based aid, so that wasn’t an issue. Also, the outside merit was minimal ($2k) so didn’t put them over COA.