I am asking this question for a friend who has a senior applying to college but does not want to start her own account here and ask. Her son is applying to a school that does not allow stacking of the scholarships that are offered by the school and if offered will get the highest offer. However, the mother’s question is, can the student then stack outside scholarships if he wins any? She can find information about not stacking the school’s scholarships but not about outside scholarships on the website. (They will not qualify for federal or other need based aid except unsubsidized loan).
Usually, but of course the school could reduce or adjust its own award.
Best to just ask the school.
Thanks.
Our experience was that many schools would not. Your friend will have to contact the FA office of each school and ask if the website does not say. In my opinion, schools are annoyingly cryptic on this issue.
Ask the school. I believe you have to let the school know when you get outside scholarships, too.
Your friend will not find anything on stacking scholarships (because they do not call it stacking).
What she really wants to know how to lower the cost .
Your friend needs to look up how the school handles outside scholarships.
There you will find the school’s policy:
If the school allows the outside scholarship to fill any unmet need especially if the school does not meet 100% demonstrated need (this is stacking)
If the school allows the outside scholarship to replace loans and the work study requirement (this is stacking)
or
if the outside scholarship replaces the need based aid
Other things that she needs to consider:
If student wins a full tuition scholarship, and gets an outside scholarship that can only be applied to tuition, what will most likely happen is the amount of the institutional scholarship will be reduced by the amount of the scholarship.
There will be no outside scholarships that will reduce her EFC (she will have to get an outside scholarship that covers the full cost of attendance in order to reduce the EFC).
Any scholarships over the cost of tuition and books, will be taxable income.
Your friend needs to determine what she wants/needs her NET cost to be and THEN find schools that will award enough merit so the net cost is what she wants.
If she needs the net cost to be - say - $10,000 per year, then she needs to find a school that will award a full tuition scholarship so that her $10k and maybe a small loan and summer earnings from her child will cover room, board, books, fees, etc.
Your friend is doing this wrong. It sounds like she wants a lot covered by merit. Outside awards are usually ONLY for freshman year, so even if she found a school that would let her stack those on top of the school’s award, what is she going to do for soph, junior and senior years???
She needs to find a school that will award enough money for ALL FOUR years.
What others are trying to tell you is that some/many schools will REDUCE their awards if outside awards come in. I’ve seen schools say, “we only allow a max of XXXX in merit.” That is so they can award more money to more students.
Also…many outside awards are specifically for TUITION, so stacking onto a tuition scholarship won’t help them.
My daughter’s school merit aid is as the OP posted. There are three levels of merit aid awarded based on gpa/scores/rank, The top two levels you can only get for stats, but the third level you can qualify for with stats or for being an eagle scout, on a robotics team, attending a STEM high school. You can only have one of those awards, so if you have higher stats, you ‘give up’ the eagle scout (third) level, and take the higher award. Other school grants, like department awards, being a legacy, having a sibling at the school, or athletic scholarships do stack with one of the merit level awards. The merit awards are $15-25k, the other grants $1-5k. The student could be below his EFC after all these non-need awards were applied, and any additional outside award would just keep chipping away at the bill.
Ex.: COA ($50k) less merit ($20k) less small grants($2k) less dept award ($10K) less outside scholarship ($5k) =$13k. If your EFC was $20k, you are already below the EFC.
When all that merit is stacked up, the school would then determine if you had any need, and determine if they had any need based money to award. It is not a ‘meets full need’ school, and many are paying their EFC and then some. Any outside scholarship reduces the bill. It doesn’t need to be a full tuition award and it wouldn’t change the merit the school awarded.
Thank you all so much, all of your answers are very helpful and make sense. I will share the information with her.