What Do I Do With This Money?

<p>Next year I will be attending Yale University and I recently filled out my family information survey and reported all the scholarships I had received at that point. However, today I just received a phone call from a local foundation that will give me a scholarship amount ~10,000. They said I could reapply each year but no guarantees. I asked if I could spread it out over four years and the person I talked to said, "Well on your application you listed your need as ~10,000. So don't you need all of it?" I didn't explain the whole difference with student contribution versus family contribution. (My parents are expected to pay around the 10,000 so I listed that as my total expenses for the year.) I understand the university will absorb outside scholarships exceeding my student contribution including term job and summer income.</p>

<p>Before I tell my college about this does anyone have any recommendations about what I should do with this money? I want to use all of it if possible and not have the college take it to reduce their scholarship. If I set up a bank account with the scholarship total to dispense myself, will Yale then charge me more because it is part of my "assets"? I also can re-apply for this local scholarship, but as I said, no guarantees.</p>

<p>Thanks for your help!</p>

<p>Please just be honest and report it to Yale. Their aid is so generous-not even student loans, if you lost this due to lying you’d be losing a lot.</p>

<p>Congratulations on your recent scholarship. I agree…be honest and report this to Yale. Bottom line is what you are paying to Yale will not change…just the origin of the funding. Need based funding is determined annually so your aid from Yale will be computed next year without this scholarship.</p>

<p>It would not be right to Yale and all the other Yale students to not report it. Yale’s generous financial aid partly dependent on being able to absorb some of the outside scholarship money coming to the student. You might want to tell the foundation and maybe they can pass the money on to a student who needs the help. Read through some of these threads, there are a lot of those students.</p>

<p>You must report it, that’s Yale’s policy. A violation of that policy could mean that you would no longer be able to receive any aid from them. Your outside scholarship can help, though. See below (from Yale’s finaid website).</p>

<p>“How does Outside Aid such as Scholarships Affect my Aid?”</p>

<p>“Yale policy allows outside merit scholarships to first reduce your self-help. Additionally, if federal guidelines allow, we will also allow outside scholarships to cover your student income contribution. If the total of your outside awards exceeds your student effort (the total of your self-help and student income contribution), the remainder will replace your Yale Scholarship”</p>

<p>Just be sure this counts as a merit scholarship. Entitlement awards (examples given on the website) are treated differently.</p>

<p>My Daughter was in a similar situation. I called the scholarship foundation and asked if she could use it for her summer term educational expenses, they sent me an email confirming that it could be used for summer term. I called financial office and they told me to forward the email to them. I sent it yesterday so still waiting for them to revert her grants.
Since my D wants to study languages and is planning on studying abroad for 2 summers, this is a good option for her.
You might want to think about summer classes if the scholarship donor allows it. Yale requires a confirmation from the donor that it can be used for summer. Or you might want to consider postponing disbursement of it until 2011-12 academic year</p>