And both need based aid and merit aid can go down (although most parents are in denial about that…)
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Ok. Assume in all my posts FA = need based aid. So goal should be to maximize merit aid, awards, grants, etc. , i.e. anything that is guaranteed for 4 years. Anything that is not guaranteed is reviewed every year and may depend of change in income, economical situation in the country, school resources etc.
I even saw in one financial offer (Muhlenberg) one grant that is subject to revision. My point is people need to be very careful in evaluating offers. Best one is not necessarily the one that gives money for year one, but the one that that guarantees money for all 4 years.
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A poster mentioned Muhlenberg from another thread about pre-med, and @momsearcheng mentioned it here. After some digging, I found it seems both Muhlenberg and Bucknell, along with Skidmore mentioned earlier, may be generous enough to use employer tuition benefit to reduce family contribution, which is great.
https://www.bucknell.edu/admissions-aid/tuition-fees-financial-aid/types-aid/outside-scholarships
After contacting the FA offices for all of them, it appears all of them are just putting up generous/confusing wording, even I thought their wording was very clear originally.
But their actual practice is very different. They will go after tuition benefit.
Skidmore may be a little different. From the FA office, “Tuition Benefits generally reduce the need-based Skidmore grant by half of the Tuition benefit value and the other half to reduce the family’s contribution. “
Sorry for the confusion.
Here is an older thread showing how colleges’ stated policies on outside scholarships can vary (but policies may have changed since then, so recheck if it is important to you). Note that a common way of applying outside scholarships is to apply them first to the student contribution (i.e. the student loan and student work that are assumed), but then reduce the school’s grants before reducing the parent contribution.
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