<p>colleges adjust your financial aid whenever you win a scholarship?</p>
<p>Colleges always say to report what money you win. Say you go to a school that costs $10K per year (hypothetical). If you're EFC is $2K, then you get $8K in aid. However, if you win $2K in scholarships and try to get the $2K off your hand, the college changes their financial aid offer to $6K so that you still have to pay $2K anyway.</p>
<p>What's the real deal?</p>
<p>some of us don't get financial aid, or some schools don't cover the entire needed amount ofm oney.</p>
<p>Usually the outside scholarships will be deducted from loans and work study first, before grants are reduced. So it could help you graduate without a bunch of loans.</p>
<p>Or, as gatordan said, if your school doesn't meet need, then it would likely not be deducted until need is met.</p>
<p>but for 100% of need schools that take $ for $? Yep. You are working for the man. You need to know up front what your school's policy is before deciding to invest 50-100 hours in trying to apply for scholarships. Bet some kids are quite surprised. That's why I laughed so hard at "The Scholar" and the big scholarship to Pomona or Harvard or Yale for some of those poor kids. Wasn't that just goofy? Some of them were full-ride kids anyway.</p>