<p>What typically happens to these when the awarded student chooses to enroll elsewhere? Does the institution save them for next year or "regift" to another student?</p>
<p>Neither. Typically colleges plan on offering far more than they could ever hope to spend, since they know some number of students will turn them down. Similar to the admissions office accepting far more students than they could ever really house, financial aid offices spend more than their budget and hope that not all of their aid offers come through.</p>
<p>Depending on the school "extra" merit aid might go to stellar sophs, juniors and seniors.</p>
<p>Barkowitz,</p>
<p>Your comment makes me feel better about son turning down a university that increased his aid significantly when we sent in other aid awards; I had been feeling like a jerk. This means there is more money they don't have to spend.</p>
<p>2 years ago I asked that question at a Holy Cross info session. The presenter indicated that if the person awarded the money did not accept no-one else got it. I thought to myself - they probably don't spend a dime since the people they award it to are high achiever students using HC as a safety and usually end up somewhere else. Now maybe the presenter was incorrect - who knows.</p>
<p>Of the 5 schools my D was most interested in, only one of them offered unused merit awards to the next person in line. All the others just put the unused $$$ back in the kitty until next year's awards were made.</p>
<p>Again as a reminder, there usually is no "kitty" of extra money that the college has just sitting around. In most cases, the offers are carefully calculated against projected yield rates so as to not go over budget. </p>
<p>This is very much the same as for an admissions office who admits 1500 in order to get a class of 1000. If they all came, the admissions office would be in trouble. </p>
<p>Just as if all of the merit offers actually came through, the college would be in trouble. Money cannot go back into any central kitty to be spent again because the money isn't real to begin with.</p>
<p>thanks for the clarification, barkowitz....I suppose what we - the applicants and their families - view as the 'kitty', you would call that portion of the school's annual budget allotted for financial aid, even though you offer way more than you expect to actually spend. The end result is still the same.....that if student A is given a very generous merit award, but decides to enroll elsewhere, that award is generally NOT given to the next most deserving applicant in line.</p>
<p>I know that unused funds at our school are given to other students. But, then again, our software system will not allow us to "overaward" our grants. We have it set up this way on purpose....so no matter how many accept them, we will not go over budget.</p>
<p>Top 200 accepted students at Colgate are offered 5K alumni memorial scholarships--pretty much the only merit Colgate offers. We were told that if they are not accepted, no one else gets them. As it turns out Colgate pays out on very few of them, since those kids tend to go elsewhere.</p>