<p>Is this something I should be asking about? Every place offered me subsudized loans and unsubbed. Only 1 place offered me Perkins loan. Half of the places offered work study. </p>
<p>Perkins loans are limited. Direct loans are not. They are, as of now, an entitlement. EVery school has its own way of determining who gets how much of the limited Perkins money they have to distribute. SEOGH is in the same category. Few students get a piece of that. Both are supposed to go to the neediest students.</p>
<p>There are three types of Federal financial aid that are called campus based aid. Perkins loans, SEOG grants, and Work Study. A schools is given a fixed amount of $$$$$ for these programs and must decide how best to allocate those funds. This includes the criteria for awarding them and the maximums they will award. At some schools, you may meet the criteria and at others you may not. Or you may meet the criteria but the school is out of funds. The funding is very limited and schools have more students that qualify than they have funds. So it is usual that you will see different awards from different schools, and even year to year from the same school.</p>
<p>Direct loans and Pell are not campus based aid so will likely be the same at each school.</p>
<p>It seems every school does its own thing. I know a student whose Dad is self employed. She’s just hearing now about her financial aid offers. One school offered her a Perkins while two other schools offered her no financial aid at all, (One of those schools gave her a 20k merit scholarship). </p>
<p>Halfempty…they are not “doing their own thing”. As noted upstream, both Perkins and federal work study have limited funding per campus. The schools award these to students based on the financial need of THEIR applicant pool AND on a first come first served basis. </p>
<p>Some schools don’t even have Perkins.</p>