<p>If you have Federal WS, but don't work that semester/year, what happens? </p>
<p>It varies by school, you may end up losing that semester’s allocation at some schools. At other schools, you have the school year to make your allocation. However, you cannot carry over your allocation from one school year to the summer or to another school year</p>
<p>Will the school bill me for the work study I did not complete?</p>
<p>No, it’s just a lost opportunity. Any reason you don’t want to take advantage of it? Do you need the money for personal expenses or books?</p>
<p>You simply did not earn the money that semester. They would not bill you for the WS as you never earned that money (or the money was never in your account).</p>
<p>My niece did not use her small work study award her first semester freshman year. She needed more hours/dollars than was awarded to her and she found a job that met those requirement on her own. Her school permitted her to carry over those hours to the second semester. About a month into the second term, she came across a perfect workstudy job, logistically, schedule wise and type of work. She used up her allotment then. But had she not found that job, which was purely serendipity, she would have just given up those hours awarded to her. </p>
<p>Not all schools will allow carry forwards to the next term, so you d need to check with your school as to what their rules are. Also ask if you can work the summer, though I believe federal funds run on a certain schedule. I’ve known kids who stay at college over the summer; many are upperclassmen who get off campus 12 month leases, and they look for work, take classes them. All of this is dependent on how your college allocates aid.</p>
<p>At my S’s school, if you did not accept Fed WS it was not awarded the following semester. I would check with the FA office. </p>
<p>My daughter’s work study award was for the full year…not per semester. You might want to check to see if this is the case. </p>
<p>If you don’t do a WS job in the fall, you won’t earn money. </p>
<p>Just curious… Are you thinking about NOT looking for a WS job? Why?</p>
<p>I’m not sure if I can handle it along with all the academics. I’m going to try looking for a job that doesn’t require a lot of shifts per week. Thanks guys!</p>
<p>Most work study jobs are ten hours a week…or less. Your college schedule will have many hours of time not spent in classes. There have actually been studies that show that students who work a small number of hours per week actually do well. </p>
<p>In college, you will not be in classes from 8-3 five days a week like in high school. You should have plenty of time.</p>
<p>It sounds a bit confusing. You get a work study allotment with a certain pay, let’s say $1,000 per semester. That money is supposed to go to pay for your school. If you don’t work, you don’t get the $1,000, so yeah you’d have to pay that $1,000 out of your own pocket.</p>
<p>I do know that if you are a freshman on work study, you might not find a job immediately, but they try to make sure you’ll make the full allotment you are allowed. I agree that you should look into it - as thumper1 said, it is by no means a full-time job, it is 10 hours per week or less, plus certain jobs would allow time to read textbooks if for example you were working an information desk.</p>
<p>Classes are 12 hours per week usually, work study would be 10 hours per week, so if you don’t play sports or go heavy on the ECs, you should be just fine.</p>
<p>The ideal thing is to get a work study that fits into your expected career, but that’s hard as a freshman.</p>
<p>Don’t dismiss the opportunity before you really research the options. You might be surprised at the range of not only positions but time demands available. D’s campus has jobs that offer as little as 4 hours a week. It’s not much and you might think it’s not worth it but at D’s campus, 4 hours a week adds up to a little more than 1000 dollars a school year (for the lowest paying jobs) and that can put a big dent in your living expenses.</p>
<p>It is confusing. The way it usually works is that you are given a work study award in your fin aid package. That means that you have the privilege of seeking a job from the Work Study list and if you find one that matches your logistical, time, schedule, etc needs, you take it and you get the money in the form of a pay check as you earn it. It doesn’t necessarily go to pay for your school Since it takes time to get the job, work the job, get the paycheck, most students are well within the first month of school before they get any of that money. It’s generally used to pay for the ancillary costs that make up the COA of going to college. Like going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, living expenses like laundry, shampoo, , discretionary spending like Friday night pizza. Or stash it and use it to pay for next term costs. </p>
<p>A tip: it’s better to spend down ones personal money and stash the workstudy money because when you fill out the next year’s FAFSA, student assets comprised of award money, including work study proceeds are not included in the EFC calculation which is 20% of student assets. So if you have, say $3K from summer work, gifts, savings, use that and replace with WS money that isn’t going to count against your EFC. Also, work study wages are not used in the computation of student earnings towards EFC, though there is about a $6K allowance for that. </p>
<p>You aren’t going to be billed for not completing the work study. Nobody HAS to do work study. It’s a portion of your financial aid, but it’s optional. You are allocated x amount of dollars in work study funds for a given school year, where x represents the maximum amount you can earn. </p>
<p>If you choose not to get a work study position, you are in turn not accepted the work study funds, which means you don’t get x. There is no penalty for not taking it. </p>