What does it take to get enough merit scholarships to make school affordable?

Paying for College
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<p>At least some colleges will apply outside scholarships first to student contribution (student loan and work earnings expectations) and unmet need (if any) before reducing their own grants. However, policies may vary between colleges.</p>

<p>Here is an example from Stanford:
<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/aid/outside/”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/aid/outside/&lt;/a&gt;
You can see that Stanford expects a student contribution of $5,000 in school year and summer work earnings; an outside scholarship up to that amount reduces this expected student contribution. However, amounts over $5,000 will result in reduced financial aid grants. Effectively, if the student is receiving a financial aid grant of $X from Stanford, outside scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $5,000+X all have the same effect of reducing the net price by $5,000. But outside scholarships of $5,000+X+Y will reduce the net price by $5,000+Y.</p>

<p>Of course, this is just Stanford’s policy; there is likely variation across other colleges.</p>

<p>Also, many outside scholarships are not very big, and only for one year.</p>

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<p>"" Do I misunderstand how outside scholarships work: Don’t colleges subtract the amount of an outside scholarship from the amount of grants being offered to help with tuition? Or, do most schools “stack” scholarships on top of tuition grants offered? (Please excuse any dumb questions; I’m a newbie.) “”</p>

<p>Scholarships often get applied to “need” first. However, some schools will outside merit to loans or student contribution first. </p>

<p>Why are you asking? Was there something in this thread that contradicted that? This student has no “need” so all merit would get applied to COA to reduce the final cost.</p>

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<p>correction to my post above:
Scholarships often get applied to “need” first. However, some schools will APPLY outside merit to loans or student contribution first</p>

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<p>OP Homer9 keep us informed on what you decide or the decision process - if you want additional feedback/help. It does help others realize how to deal with all the information and decisions.</p>

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<p>Some schools would allow stacking scholarships from different sources up to CoA (even a little bit over it in some cases).</p>

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<p>^^^
Absolutely, but since this student needs full COA covered (except for maybe $8k or so), then the student needs to get the hugest chunk from the school.</p>

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<p>mom2: I went off on a tangent and was not homed in on the OP. Thanks for this info! </p>