<p>Ok so I am very confused about what happens with scholarship/financial aid money if it is in excess of what you need. So my EFC is 0. Last year my sister got enough money to pay for more than her tuition alone and got a check for the excess for money and food etc. They said that this was because the amount of her grants were less than her total cost of attendence which is a combination of housing, tuition, meals, gas, etc. Ok so what happens if with my federal grants and other scholarships it goes over that amount? They are just going to take that money away from me? I can't get a straight answer from them......does anybody know what happens?</p>
<p>Your scholarships and need based grants cannot exceed the school's cost of attendance. But any excess scholarship/grant money after costs charged directly by the school are paid to you for you to use for other expenses.</p>
<p>Each school has a published financial aid cost of attendance (actually, there may be several, depending on a student's situation - # credit hours, where student lives, how far from home, etc). The COA includes tuition, room, board, fees, books, and miscellaneous personal expenses. You may be awarded a combination of nonneed based and need based aid up to the COA. You will get your Pell grant no matter what (even if you have merit awards that exceed the COA).</p>
<p>If any of your awards from the school are need based, they will be adjusted so that your awards do not exceed the COA. If all of your awards are merit based only, you can keep all of your merit awards and your Pell. </p>
<p>No one will be taking money away from you if your need based awards are adjusted to keep your awards from exceeding COA. If you exceed COA, you are exceeding your need ... and by definition of need, you don't have need if you have other awards to meet your need!</p>
<p>What if one doesn't want to live on campus, in other words their merit awards exceed tuition and books and everything including food, but do not exceed the total cost when on campus housing is factored in. So awards total 30,000 and tuition and books and all that, except housing total 25,000 and then housing is another 7,000 which would make the total 32,000. Would I be able to just keep the 5,000 and live wherever I wanted, or would I have to contribute that 5,000 to housing.</p>
<p>Depends on how the school does the COA. At my daughters school the COA is the same for a student living on campus or off campus. So the excess money, once tuition etc are paid, is paid to her and she uses it for her off campus rent and bills. Some schools may have a lower COA for living off campus in which case aid would be lower for living off campus.</p>
<p>You can get the COAs a college uses by calling Financial Aid. Different colleges use different methods. </p>
<p>You can keep the excess if you go below COA. Do be aware of any possible tax reporting implications of scholarships that pay more than tuition.</p>