<p>...and they somehow find out. How much trouble am I in with the school? I know it probably depends on the school.</p>
<p>Ok, say I get into Northwestern, and say my EFC is 20k. NU costs 50k and meets 100% of need.</p>
<p>So say my package looks like this: 23k grants, 5k loans, 2K work study.</p>
<p>Now if I got 5k from outside, they would normally reduce the loans which would be nice. But what if I get 10k, and being a greedy POS, I don't tell them.</p>
<p>Would a school revoke my admission, or lower my aid?</p>
<p>Once they discover the scholarship money, they are under Federal regulations to reduce your aid so that the total, including the newly discovered scholarship, doesn’t equal more than the total Cost of Attendance. Also, depending on the contract signed, the type of aid awarded, it may also cost you additional pains, since it is considered by many to be a violation of the honor code. Integrity means a lot to many schools and deliberately withholding information is dishonest.</p>
<p>All of my scholarships were sent either directly to the university or the check was made out to me AND the university. I would be very surprised if there is a $10,000 scholarship that would go directly to you rather than to your university.</p>
<p>not too mention, many scholarships will send you a tax document at the end of the year and report the scholarship to the IRS and it becomes a public record.</p>
<p>I am not a lawyer. I assist lawyers with scientific and technical information revelent to their case work.</p>
<p>Generally serious white collar criminals seek the “client confidentiality protected” advice of an attorney prior to their fraud. This is usually “fig-leafed” for the attorney by weasel words like “speaking hypothetically” or “I heard about a situation where etc.”</p>
<p>A modest scholarship award is well beyond the limit for felony fraud. You probably are, or will be soon, a legal adult. </p>
<p>Financial aid is limited. What you get reduces what is available for another student. You are really stealing from your peers, not “the man”. </p>
<p>This is a circumstance where illegal and immoral are definitely the same.</p>
<p>You are not a bad person for thinking of doing this bad thing. Everyone has momentary moral lapses in their own mind. Avoid acting on these baser impulses. </p>
<p>If you can get an outside scholarship, you should do so. Your award from your institution may be reduced but you will be building your school and helping other students there. Lowering or replacing your loan is a good incentive.</p>
<p>Let’s face it, if Jimmy Carter ( a man I respect and admire) is right and doing evil in your heart is the same as actually performing the act, then “we all gonna go to hell”.</p>
<p>I was just wondering about it, and like tocollege said, most went to the university directly. But people tell me don’t your school about outside scholarships, so I was just wondering if anyone has done this and got caught. I don’t really think it’s worth the risk/reward.</p>
<p>Depending on who you are talking to, maybe you are misinterpreting what they are saying. I was advised NOT to tell the university about the outside scholarships until AFTER they had presented their financial aid package. That way you can propose using the scholarships to replace loans and workstudy. If they know about the scholarships before they put the package together, it might be harder to get them to INCREASE a grant, rather than keep the grant at the same amount. I was also advised NOT to commit to the school until after all the fin aid and outside scholarship issues had been resolved and agreed to - in writing.</p>
<p>I know people who did not report their local scholarships (usually $500-$1500 each) and suggested we were crazy for reporting our son’s awards. They say they are not scholarships but cash awards and they treat them as “gifts”. These checks were written to the student by local organizations. We also reported the amounts when doing his taxes and his total scholarships/grants exceeded tuition so taxes had to be paid.</p>
<p>We chose to tell the school about them because we interpreted them (about $2500 total) as “scholarships” and not “gifts”. It just didn’t seem right to do otherwise. I do not believe it was reported anywhere legally by the groups (PTA, Elks…) as far as we could tell. We never received any paperwork in any case. </p>
<p>Our son’s school had already replaced his student loan with part of the Discover Card Scholarship which we reported early on (he received it before college apps). The school’s policy is to reduce either student loans or student contribution but not both so we expected them to reduce the school grant dollar for dollar (and we would be expected to send them $2500). The financial aid officer asked if we planned to purchase a computer. He suggested that we could use the local scholarship $ to cover the cost of our son’s new laptop. We had to submit the bill and the school increased the COA by that amount, recalculating a new “need”. They applied the scholarship $ toward that need and wound up reducing the school grant slightly. </p>
<p>So in the end, we were able to “keep” most of the local scholarship money and we felt like we did the right thing. A win win.</p>
<p>Its always best to be totally honest…especially since one doesn’t always know how the school will respond. My institution takes outside scholarships seriously. We always start by reducing Parent PLUS first, then unsub loans, then sub loans, then perkins. (We don’t count EFC in any calculation except for need-based aid calculations, so all grants, scholarships and loans total the COA). If there is sufficient scholarship funding to totally rid the package of all loans, then we start reducing institutional aid. However, if we find out about a scholarship on our own (that the student did not disclose to the school), we remove ALL institutional aid immediately, unless the student or parent can provide us with a legitimate reason for failing to notify us about the outside scholarship.</p>
<p>The vast majority of scholarships send the money directly to the school. I seriously would not take the chance if this one does not. Also, you will have to report the scholarship on next year´s taxes which you need to send a copy of to the school if you get aid.</p>
<p>For a school that has an honor code, this type of misrepresentation would be a blantant violation of the honor code and code get you kicked out of school.</p>
<p>Everything eventually is going to come out. the organization that gave you the scholarship is going to report to the IRS that you have received monies from them. When you apply for FA all of your information is going to cross paths, especially if you are selected for verification.</p>
<p>Use the $$ to reduce your loans, reduce your workstudy ask for a one-time purchase for a computer. You have much more to lose by being untruthful than you the amount of $$ that you are pocketing.</p>
<p>That’s dishonest of you and they want to know so they can calculate how much finanacial aid that you need minus the scholarship depending on how much it’s for.</p>