I think I can help here - at the bottom of her admission under the “P.S.” that Case personalizes to each applicant (love that!) it says " The following letters are available for this account:
Admission decision - December 19, 2023 (displayed)
Financial aid notification - December 19, 2023
and the Financial Aid is a hyperlink.
When that opens you will find the merit award that was included in her admission letter, and the need based aid grant, they do stack because it then lists the net cost of attendance after both of those.
2024-2025 Scholarships & Grants Award Descriptions Amount
CWRU Grant
University Scholarship
Below that it includes any work study offered, as well as the $5500 federal loan, and the final line is the final cost to attend. For my daughter it looks like this (my D24 also got the governors scholarship and that is probably the one thing you need to call about, whether that gets subtracted from her need, my guess is it probably would)
Your net price after scholarships, grants, work and loan assistance is: $26,872
The financial aid counselor at Case was unsure If the governor’s scholarship (5k for private schools) would ‘stack’ or not, since it’s so new; she said she’ll find out and let me know. I feel like it should, since it’s from state tax money. I’ll be sure to provide an update once I have the answer!
Is the $29k all listed as parent contribution, or is some of it listed as student loan and student work earnings? If the latter, then CWRU’s stated policy of applying outside scholarships to replace student loan and student work earnings should apply here. But check with CWRU.
The 29K is just the listed parents’ contribution. The financial aid counselor said we could use up to $8500 in ‘external’ scholarship funds to offset the $8500 in loans($5500) & work study ($3000)…I’ll take it! Still hoping for the governor scholarship to ‘stack.’
Also hoping once Case processes our FAFSA, that our expected contribution may be lower, because their own online calculator (the more in- depth one, not the quick 5-6 question one) put us at 22k.
Yes I saw your initial reply that answered the question about the outside scholarship after I replied and that applies to us as well so thank you for those details. The Ohio Governor’s Scholarship is a $5K renewable scholarship to ‘keep top academic talent in our state.’ As an added incentive for that purpose I could see Case allowing it to stack with the CWRU grant but very likely will be applied as they and you have indicated. NEVER hurts to ask though!!
If you don’t mind me asking, are you okay with the 26K out-of-pocket? I ask because ours is so similar, and I don’t feel that it’s outrageous, but I wonder if I’m out of touch.
No I don’t think its outrageous at all, but I do wish that they would follow OSU and many other Ohio public and private universities in using a tuition cohort (where your tuition is set the year you enter and remains the same for four years).
Right! Naively, I thought this was a given, until another parent enlightened me. Wonder if parents can appeal for this? Can’t hurt to ask, given that they’re seemingly in the minority on this …
If a college determines your need to be $50,000 and awards a $25,000 merit scholarship and then $25,000 need-based grant that is NOT stacking. If she had not received the merit award the need-based grant would be $50,000.
“A qualifying IHE shall not make changes to scholarship or financial aid programs offered by that institution that have the goal or net effect of shifting the cost burden of those programs to the GMS program. Qualifying institutions of higher education that enroll students receiving the GMS shall maintain the same level of merit-based financial aid that the institution provided in the most recent academic year in the aggregate to all students or on a per-student basis.”
The letter lists the merit aid, then the financial aid on the next line, and adds them together for the total aid. I can attach the letter later today to clarify.
That is how every school does it. Since the merit and the aid both come from Case stacking has nothing to do with it. I believe this is what @TomSrOfBoston was saying.
Case believes you have 50K of need, and you get it via a combo of merit and need-based aid or just need-based aid. It’s all from the same source. I’m leaving loan/work study out of the example.
An example of stacking would be if you have an outside scholarship for 20K. Then the question would be does Case “stack” that outside scholarship or not. Do you still get the 25K merit (from Case), the 25K grant need based (from Case) AND the 20K outside scholarship?
Some schools would reduce your need based aid because of the 20K outside scholarship, and others may not.
My daughter applied early action, and got her acceptance letter with merit aid amount well before CSS profile was in…then she got almost as much in need-based aid later, so we’re grateful. Still seem to be waiting on FAFSA to see if anything changes (which I doubt, but you never know, I guess).
A common practice with outside scholarships is to apply the outside scholarship first to replace student loan and student work expectation before reducing need-based grants from the school. If the school calculates “need” but leaves some of it unmet, it may also apply the outside scholarship to unmet need before reducing need-based grants.
Example assuming a hypothetical school that claims to “meet need”:
Category
Base FA package
+$20k outside scholarship
Notes
List price
$90,000
$90,000
Student loan
$5,500
$0
Replaced by outside scholarship
Student work(-study)
$3,000
$0
Replaced by outside scholarship
Outside scholarship
$0
$20,000
Parent contribution
$21,500
$21,500
Need-based grant
$60,000
$48,500
Reduced by outside scholarship
Net price
$30,000
$21,500
$20,000 outside scholarship reduces net price by $8,500
So in this example, the $20,000 outside scholarship benefits the student by $8,500.