Let’s assume total cost of attendance (tuition, books, dorm, ect) adds up to be about $70,000 for all 4 year and I get $90,000 in OUTSIDE scholarships (not provided by the school). Where does that extra $20k go?
Where are you getting $90,000 in outside scholarship money?
I will assume that the scholarship money is given directly to the school. Once all direct billed expenses (tuition/fees/room/board/anything else directly billed by the schools) is paid, the remaining funds will be refunded to the student. However, any scholarships that exceed QEE (tuition, required books, most fees require to attend college) will be considered taxable income.
Maybe it will be returned to the student… Some scholarships are for tuition only, or books only, or room and board at the school only. You have to look at the terms of the scholarship and see if it can be rebated to the student for other costs.
Sometimes the scholarships reduces the amount of financial aid that is received.
DD had more than the COA in outside scholarships and the school carried it over to the next year. I can’t remember if they asked, or just did it.
Sometimes it depends on the scholarship. Check to,see what happens IF the scholarship exceeds the cost of attending the school. Some scholarships have a need component and that award won’t go to you if you have no need for college costs.
Some scholarships are VERY specific as well…and say the money must be used for college costs.
So… check.
Oh…and this is an assumption? Has it really happened?
If not…don’t count your chickens before they hatch!
@CourtneyThurston what happened to your excess scholarships?
I’d say the scholarship org would keep anything over COA.
The likelyhood of getting that much outside scholarship money is pretty remote. My D did get more than her first year’s COA when you combine outside scholarships and school scholarships, the overage was refunded to my DD to be applied towards next year’s expenses. Many of her outside scholarships were small local one time scholarships but because they all came the first year she had to pay tax on them. I can’t imagen that she’d get future scholarships that would exceed her COA for all four years but boy, that would be nice! If it did happen I imagen she would return the unused scholarship money if the school didn’t do it automatically.
I think that OP means by “outside scholarship” the money not given through any school scholarship program. If OP’s scholarship was directly paid to school, then the reminder of it should be refunded to the student. This is what happened to me. But I would suggest to contact your college Financial Aid office.
I’ve been summoned. It depends on whether or not your school will stack their own aid with others’ aid. If it does not (many schools, including almost all ‘top’ schools), the situation looks like this:
Suppose you get:
$30,000 institutional grant
$20,000 outside scholarship
and have a $50,000 COA
The institutional grant gets reduced to $10,000, so you still only have $30,000 in gift aid. You net 0.
If your school DOES allow stacking their own aid and others’ (more common among schools that offer automatic/less-competitive merit, lesser known privates, etc), the situation will look like this:
Suppose you get:
$30,000 institutional grant
$20,000 outside scholarship
and have a $50,000 COA
The 30k adds with the 20k and you meet full COA. You will get in cash, as a refund, the remainder of this: COA - Direct Expenses to the school. So if direct expenses was 45k, you would get 5k in cash as a refund.
You will never get more than COA - Direct expenses in cash. I won over 420k in 2015, and my degree only costs a little over 200k. So I’m in an overage situation every year – which means I get the amount that = COA - Direct expenses (in my case, about 20k/yr) in cash refunded to me by the bursar, but no more than that.
super mega tl;dr – any money over COA goes into the nether, never to be seen again.
Depends on the school. Talk to the bursar’s office and see if they can “hold” money for summer programs and/or study abroad if those interest you. My D is slightly over COA for 1st year, although the outside scholarship won’t be sent until after she’s been in school for a while, so supposedly it’s going to be applicable to a summer program she hopes to do next year. (I’m not holding my breath, though.)
Hi you seemed to be very knowledgeable. Could you help me out by commenting on my post - “True cost of attendace @ UPenn”. thanks
Some colleges have limited stacking, where merit scholarships will replace loans and work study first before replacing grants. For example:
https://financialaid.stanford.edu/aid/outside/
https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/financial-aid/types/scholarships/
So in the quoted example, if the college with a $50,000 COA offered a $30,000 institutional grant and $8,000 of federal direct loans and work study, a $20,000 outside scholarship would replace the $8,000 of federal direct loans and work study and $12,000 of institutional grant, giving you a net gain of $8,000, or reduction of net price by $8,000.
For privacy reasons I’m not going to say the school, but my daughter is in a unicorn situation in which she has received scholarships that result in the bursar transferring the overage into her personal account. She gets a flat amount for books each semester, a flat amount for travel expenses, and a flat amount for personal expenses. She is not required to provide any type of receipt for those and she’s used the overage for sorority expenses/dues. An additional outside scholarship is being paid directly to her and the school is allowing her to hold that for summer and not taking it away from her regular amount.
It’s a unicorn situation like I said. And a tax nightmare.
Can any outside scholarship ever be deferred to be used for graduate school/ professional school?
@mommdc - that would of course depend on the college/university. I have heard of outside scholarships being applied to a student in a 3/5 year masters program, but those programs are naturally very difficult to get into.
@mommdc my D has one that can. It’s a certain amount for four years but one year her own college would have absorbed it, due to a different one year outside scholarship, so she deferred it. She had the option to double it for the next year or defer the year to grad school. It very much depends on the specific scholarship. The one-time one that year wouldn’t let her do it.