So I’ma be a sophomore at Michigan this fall studying civil engineering. I got my financial aid and including loans it is more than enough to pay for my tuition and housing, however I’m still waiting on my scholarship from the engineering department that total ups to $20,000 (I got this as a freshman and in order to keep this scholarship I need to be a full time student and have at least a 3.00 GPA). Once this scholarship is applied, which is apparently at the end of August, I won’t have to take out loans and can just rely on grants and scholarships. My problem is that once this engineering scholarship is applied to my account I will have about $14,000 extra. I know there are cases where students get whatever money left over from their account as a direct deposit or check, but will the school actually give me about $14,000? So I guess my question is, has anyone experienced having money in the form of grants and scholarships taken away from them because there was just so much money left over after paying the bill?
Did they send you a $14k check as a freshman? I’m guessing probably not. Many schools don’t stack aid, so as scholarships come in, other grants are removed. If you took out loans over what you need to cover the cost of attendance they’d send that to you, but you’d have to pay it back. Wait until your scholarship is applied to your account to see where you stand.
If they do send you $14k, hit me up
No as a freshman I actually had to pay a small part of my tuition, but this year they gave me more financial aid.
If I understand correctly - the scholarship will count against loans, then work-study, then grants. I may be wrong, so check with the financial aid office.
EXCEPT for the Provosts Award
My daughter actually get a check from her nursing scholarship because we prepaid her tuition. Also she gets a check for the outside scholarship paid to the school by my employer.
The engineering scholarship will be applied by the end of August. The financial aid office will issue you an updated award notice with the loan (and perhaps workstudy) amount reduced. My D has been in this situation and she is an upcoming junior in CoE now. She got 5 revisions of FA notice in freshmen and 5 for sophomore. Her last version of sophomore FA notice was received on 9/4 last year right before school started. So you will not see the extra $14,000.
By the way, they did take out the loan, work study, and part of the grant money when my D received additional scholarships. That made a couple of those scholarships worthless as they subtract the grant amount accordingly. Once you have all your loan and work study replaced by scholarship(s), you would not gain anything by getting more merit scholarships until they offset all the grant money also.
@carlsandburgsr What do you mean? Is that a merit scholarship?
the award is contingent on a self-help portion for OOS state students. It is a grant. @brantly
Thanks, @carlsandburgsr
Is it a scholarship that student’s can apply for? And what did you mean by “except for”? Just trying to wrap my mind around the possible awards.
It is a need based grant only for OOS students with low EFC’s. Meaning this is the lone grant where if you were to get a scholarship in addition, this grant aid would be reduced and then loans/work study.
^^Ah, OK. Thanks for explaining. Didn’t realize they had a dedicated grant for OOS students.
Yeah, they’ll start cutting your financial aid package. I had this happen to me last year. The first to go is your work study, the second to go is federal unsubsidized loans, the third is subsidized loans, and the final thing you’ll say bye-bye to is your grant. As an in-state student I had about 11k in all of this aid and reported about 8k in scholarships, and they cut work-study and federal loans, and then they slashed my grant in half so my financial aid was about 3k and my scholarships made the 11k. You will not get 14k back, as nice as that would be. Since cost of attendance is 28k, I’d imagine, based on the size of each individual item in your aid package, that you’d lose your work-study money (no biggie) for sure. I don’t know how big your grant or your loans are, but I’m imagining what ever they leave you is going to be just enough to meet the total cost of attendance which means you will get approximately $0.00 back.
@agriffith Perhaps it depends on the student, however, they always remove the loan before workstudy for my D. I just check her financial aid for the upcoming year again and now she has all loan replaced by the scholarship but still part of the workstudy left. This has been the case in the last 3 years that they offset the loan amount first, then work study. This is the opposite as your situation.
@billcsho Interesting. Last year my work study got slashed after I reported a scholarship about equivalent to it’s amount and then my loans went bye-bye when I reported the rest of them. I’m not sure how they would determine what to remove first. I wish I was in your situation because non-work study jobs in positions were you can really get good experience (aka in labs and professor’s projects) are snapped up quickly and are few and far in between.
@agriffith Even my D still has a couple thousands dollars in work study every year, she never used it. She did private tutoring and part time job instead. There is some benefit for work study over a part time job, however, one may find higher rate part time job than most work study offers. So it does not really hurt you that much.
The advantage of taking a work-study job if you are offered it in your aid package is that your work-study income does not count in your financial aid determination the following year.
With the new FAFSA application cycle, it actually matters only for the aids 1.5-2 years later. For upcoming junior, workstudy has no impact on financial aid even for senior year.