So I will be attending Duke in the fall and I’m also applying to a bunch of scholarships now. However, Duke only uses money earned from scholarships to get rid of the loan requirement first, then work study, and then starts chipping away from your grant aid (which essentially has no effect on paying for college). Is there a way for me to use money from scholarships in a way that actually reduces costs once the loan and work study components have already been removed? Basically every scholarship I have applied to lists “books” and “other college expenses” as ways to utilize their awards, not just tuition. So can a scholarship, won out of the merit of a student (not financial need-based), be used to pay for books and other stuff without grant aid being removed?
You need to report your outside scholarships to Duke. Usually books are in liked in your cost of attendance…and your need based aid therefore already includes the provision for getting books.
I think what you are asking is if your outside scholarships can reduce your family contribution…and not chip,away at your grants.
Short answer…you already know Duke’s policy, it seems.
Schools expect the families to pay their family contribution.
If Duke first reduces loans when an outside scholarship is received, then it should be obvious that this does in fact have an impact on what you pay for college. If you take out a loan for college, you’re assuming that you’ll have to repay it right? An outside scholarship that takes the place of a loan means there is that much less money that you will have to pay for college. Score!
I’m actually in a similar situation with my son where we will have some of our grant aid removed (about $2K worth). One point to remember is that the amount of subsidized Stafford loans increases from year to year (extra $1K in yr 2 to $4,500 and extra $2K in years 3 and 4 to $5,500), so you can use more outside scholarship money to offset loans. So in our case we are losing $2K of grant money as a freshman, $1K as sophmore and nothing as a junior and senior.
I understand where you are coming from because we have the same issue. My son has significant scholarships, loans he qualifies for, work study, and then there is an additional out of pocket that we have to come up with (we being him or parents) with a parent plus or external loan. He has received a couple external scholarships for his first year. As they are arriving and getting applied, instead of reducing the out of pocket part we need to come up with, it reduced the amount he can borrow on his student loans. So - in the long run it is a good thing because he is borrowing less. In the short term, it doesn’t help us though because we still have to come up with that out of pocket remainder now (or in payments as it may be). From best I can tell, it all has to do with that magic number that is created by the total cost of attendance (which includes estimates for books etc) that each school has minus your EFC. The total aid cannot sum more than that magic number so the perkins loan, etc start getting reduced first as more external aid comes in rather than the out of pocket amount. I do know some students where the scholarship was given directly to them instead of to the school (I have no idea if that is supposed to be reported since we did not have that situation). I would think that is the only way it wouldn’t adjust your amount to be loaned. It’s all rather confusing isn’t it??
The other thing I’m running into is that those external scholarship may get applied all to the one semester instead of the full year. What I don’t know is if the amount of aid you can receive is for the year vs for the semester so if you put the scholarship all on fall does it equally reduce aid eligibility on Fall and Spring or just Fall?
You can ask the school to split the scholarships between fall and spring, but it is up to them.
Also, your son can always take the full Stafford loan, even if it doesn’t appear on his FA package. It will be an unsubsidized loan, but it will still be cheaper than a Plus loan or an outside loan. You have to ask the school to put it into his package.
I spend an hour or so on the phone with the woman from the FA office every year applying all the grants and scholarships so that D has to borrow the least amount and gets enough to pay her rent. It takes some moving things around because some funds can only be used for tuition, others only on school billed items.
It is very complicated isn’t it?? That’s where we are - the trying to understand and shuffle process.