<p>Is it possible to qualify for work study at one institution and not another?</p>
<p>For example, Duke is giving me $2000 in WS, whereas Stanford is not giving me any. And when I emailed Stanford about it, they said I was ineligible. And my FAFSA information was the same for both schools...?</p>
<p>Yes, it is possible. If your need, as defined by the college’s COA (official cost of attendance) minus your FAFSA EFC is met by other monies by the school or other sources of aid, you are not eligible for work study any more. If Stanford’s COA is $55K and your EFC was $10K but Stanford’s need formula’s and stores of aid allotted you $50Kin financial aid, though you still have to come up with $5K somehow you cannot get it through work study or subsidized federal loans because you do not have need. In fact, if you have to come up with $10K, in this scenario, you still won’t qualify for Work Study, because your EFC is $10K. You and your family are expected to come up with that amount of money from a source other than federal aid funds. You can borrow unsubsidized Staffords money towards it, but you cannot get work study.</p>
<p>Now if Duke puts together a package that includes work study, you still have to come up with your EFC. Did they throw the Staffords in there to meet it? How do the packages compare? What is the bottom line cost that you have to pay to each school? I am curious because both Stanford and Duke are generous, and I was not aware that Duke used self help to meet need.</p>
<p>yes, it is absolutely possible to qualify for WS at one school and not at another. Work Study is what is called campus based aid (the other typed of camous based aid are the Perkins loan and SEOG grant). This means a school is given very limited federal funds for these programs and the school decides their own criteria that they will use to award the funds and the maximum amounts they will award. Even then, there will usually be many more students who meet the school’s criteria than the school will have funds to award. Once they have awarded the funds they have, they can not get any more. (my daughter has meet her school’s criteria every year and has received it two years but not the others because they ran out of money before they got to her FAFSA. )</p>
<p>Swimcatsmom, is there a difference, though, between not qualifying and just not given work study? My SIL’s niece was not given work study in her aid package which did gap her in terms of FAFSA EFC. When she got to college, she found a Work Study job opening just by chance, and went to financial aid and asked for the job. And she got it. THis was after the term started, and apparently no one claimed that job. She had the need as defined by FAFSA so the school was able to give her the unclaimed work study dollars. I realize that my son, for example, would not have been eligible for that job if it had to be paid by work study money because our EFC was too high to qualify for any aid, so we had no need that could be met by the program. So my son is definitely not eligible, but A, was eligible but the school did not award her the money in her aid package.</p>
<p>Yes, you can qualify and not get it. That happened to my daughter this year. She asked why she had not got it as she had a large gap (well a PLUS loan - same thing to me) which she had not had before and had not received WS or SEOG that she had received before. She went to see the FA office and they said it was because she was selected for verification and by the time they received her documents they had run out of funds. She never did get WS even though she had a job lined up - couldn’t take it because she had no award and they would only hire a WS student, but at the beginning of spring she was given SEOG funds as they had become available (presumably some recipient dropped out). </p>
<p>Her first year she had WS but already had an outside job related to her career interest. The FA department asked her to turn down the award if she was not going to use it so they could award it to someone else. So that year at least one person on the waiting list.</p>
<p>I imagine if a school had unused WS funds that no qualified person wanted they could award it to a student who might not otherwise qualify. Never seems to be an issue at my daughter’s school though.</p>
<p>I guess at DS’s school, there are unclaimed funds. There are so many jobs available that are not work study that may be more lucrative, better hours, more hours, better jobs, I guess. A only gets a small amount at this position, so many kids may have passed it up as they would want more money and not feel like piecing together several jobs. She has another job with more hours that is non workstudy.</p>