<p>At Amherst and Midd, outside scholarships reduce workstudy, then college grants. If I get scholarships in excess of work-study for one year, will they roll over to the next year?</p>
<p>I will be on a lot of financial aid and am terribly grateful for that. The problem is that my parents are against me going to a liberal arts colleges because they think I'll be making min. wage when I graduate. I know that I can depend on them if I have a really urgent need for money, but I don't think they will be willing to pay 40k for college (40k is for all years). I have enough saved up for the first year. Can I convert the rest of the parent contribution to loans, and then use scholarships (if they exceed work-study) to reduce loans in the package? The colleges are very clear that scholarships will reduce college grants, but if they can pay for workstudy, can't they also pay for loans?</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your question is. Scholarships don’t reduce parent contribution unless they’re so big that they exceed need. </p>
<p>Scholarships can reduce loans that are in FA packages, but they can’t reduce loans that are being taken out for EFCs. However, if there are Stafford loans in your FA package, those can be reduced. AND, then you can take unsub loans to put towards your EFC (Others can correct me if I’m mistaken.) </p>
<p>However, I’m wondering why your parents think that those who go to LACs make minimum wage? Don’t they realize that many grads from LACs become doctors, dentists, professors, lawyers, business people, and other professionals?</p>
<p>I’m guessing that if you told them that you were majoring in something that they knew leads to a good paying job, they wouldn’t have this misconception.</p>
<p>So, is their bigger concern your choice of major? If so, what is your intended major. What is your intended career?</p>
<p>“but they can’t reduce loans that are being taken out for EFCs.”
Thanks-- That answers my question. There are no Stafford loans in my fin-aid packages.</p>
<p>I’m majoring in psychology, but I’ll probably double in something more practical like biology. At the moment, my dream career is to be a social psychology researcher, or to teach psychology at the college level. My parents are immigrants who are ill-informed of liberal arts colleges. It doesn’t help that my brother (aeronautical engineer, graduate of UC Berkeley) is also convinced that I’ll be working towards a worthless degree. I haven’t told my family that I want to major in psychology, but they’ve already deemed Amherst and Midd “garbage schools”, based on the fact that no B.S. degrees are awarded and because their friends haven’t heard of them. I’ve emailed my siblings the Wall Street Journal’s ranking of colleges for grad school placement and several articles expounding the virtues of a liberal arts education. They aren’t moved.</p>
<p>I know my intended career doesn’t have a clear-cut path leading to it, but I don’t want to give up on it before I’ve even started, you know? My parents and I don’t communicate well, for two reasons: 1) I can’t speak my native language fluently. 2) Their actions are always guided by practicality. They tend not to think in terms of happiness and think I’m dumb and misguided because I believe in “fit”. I’m more idealistic, and we’re so fundamentally different in our values that it’s hard to imagine them even beginning to understand. I spent two hours trying to explain to my dad the WSJ rankings, and he said, “Well, if you go to Amherst or Midd and get into Stanford for graduate school, that’s okay then.”</p>
<p>Since Amherst grads are likely to get accepted to schools like Stanford for grad school, then what’s the problem? your dad should be fine then. </p>
<p>BTW…you may end up earning more than your UCB brother.</p>
<p>If you went to Berkeley or Stanford and got a BA in psychology (or similar field) you wouldn’t be in a better situation than getting that BA from Midd or Amherst. It is a degree that doesn’t have a predictable career path attached to it. (Not something I have a problem with, being mom to an English major and a Religion major. ;))</p>
<p>So it seems like the issue has more to do with your choice of major than the school, if your parents were to examine the issue… which I understand they will not.</p>
<p>Your outside scholarships in excess of workstudy could also flow over into your summer earnings expectation before they reduce college grants. If that’s the case, then it’s all good because it just means all of what you earn over the summers can go toward meeting your EFC. You won’t be able to earn 10K in a summer, but you could earn 3K without much difficulty, and that will reduce what you’d have to borrow by a healthy chunk.</p>
<p>But work on your parents… you may never convince them but it doesn’t hurt to keep trying. If they’re not swayed this year, maybe they will be by the next year… and so on. I have a feeling it will all work out.</p>