Recently I’ve received some scholarships that I have to either accept or decline. What reasons would there be to decline a scholarship?
Because you aren’t attending.
If it is to a school you are enrolled or committed to, very few reasons. Generally the “decline” might be used for loans. Or perhaps you got a merit scholarship that would replace need based, and don’t want to deal with the GPA requirements? (Not even sure that is possible to do).
You should accept everything you need after it is all final. If you need to appeal, don’t accept it yet.
So for outside scholarships that are applicable to any school you’re going to, there’s no real reason to decline right?
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In viewing scholarship offers from various universities, a lot of thought goes into comparing them. It is not just the dollar amount that is important when choosing your best offer.
Top reasons to decline a scholarship (and choose a different university’s scholarship offer) include:
- GPA to keep the scholarship is too high for your planned major, making it too risky with high a chance of losing it
- burdensome tasks required to keep the scholarship (such as volunteer work, meetings, letters, papers, travel, etc.)
- scholarship does not last four years and is non-renewable
- scholarship does not cover as much of your expenses as your offers elsewhere
- scholarship puts you over the limit for total cost of attendance and will cause another scholarship or financial aid to be lowered
- scholarship, by its name and affiliation, publicly identifies you in a way you would rather not be identified publicly
- scholarship requires that you commit to a particular major that you are unsure you want to stick with
- scholarship requires that you choose a major within a particular college of a university, or has other restrictions
- scholarship is for conducting a research project or studying abroad, and you don’t plan to do those things
- scholarship is need-based, and you won’t be able to prove need in future years to renew
- you simply have better scholarship offers elsewhere
- you prefer a different university even if the scholarships are not your highest/best offers
For outside scholarships, if your FA already covers you, some kids will decline. Why? Bc it won’t increase their base, the FA usually goes down in the same amount. So presuming the outside scholarship will not decease work study or loans, which is a great trade off, a student might decline if it will just decrease their need based aid. as mommyrocks said, scholarships sometimes come with ongoing requirements that may not be worth it if you already have grant aid.
DD declined a local $2000 scholarship that she could have used anywhere, because she got great need based aid, and because she learned that if she turned it down, the runner-up would get increased to the higher amount (vs $500 initially). She had applied for the local scholarship before knowing where she would be accepted. There were no strings attached to this particular local scholarship, and she didn’t know who was runner-up when she declined it. She bit her tongue when her friend told her how excited he was that he won it - she figured why lessen his happiness? So only her parents, brother, and the local scholarship committee know the truth.
If the scholarship does not actually reduce the net price (i.e. would cause the reduction of other grants or scholarships, rather than reducing student loans or student work expectation), or the scholarship has undesirable strings attached that are of more negative value than the value of the scholarship.
An unlikely reason to decline an outside scholarship, but one that could happen, is if accepting the award requires you to affirm some belief you don’t hold or affirm that you are a member of a group that you’re not. Obviously, this is the sort of thing that should be checked before applying for the scholarship but maybe it was buried in the fine print.
(edit) Just noticed that this is similar to @mommyrocks reason above “scholarship, by its name and affiliation, publicly identifies you in a way you would rather not be identified publicly”.
Sometimes the college web page is just set up for you to accept or decline all types of FA, including loans. One daughter has to go through and click ‘accept’ for everything but the unsubbed loan. Other daughter’s school automatically accepts the grants and scholarships, but D has to go in and accept the loans if she wants them, and work study.
A reason you may want to reject the work study is if you have another (outside?) scholarship that can plug that ‘need’ and not max out. You can always get a regular job.
DS will be applying for several outside scholarships and a school specif full ride. I know that the outside scholarships offered by dh’s employer can only be used for tuition and fees. If he get’s both the full ride and the employer’s scholarship he would need to decline the employer scholarship.