<p>It would make more sense to treat outside scholarships the same as any other asset.</p>
<p>What I think would be fair would be for an outside scholarship to be considered “income” on the student’s part in terms of computing/reducing financial aid offers. If a student earns a $2K scholarship, that should be counted the same way for financial aid purposes as if she earned $2K working at McDonald’s. So it doesn’t reduce need dollar-for-dollar the way that outside scholarships do now, but it does reduce need in line with other students who come up the the same money other ways.</p>
<p>
Cornell told us straight out at an accepted student event that some students were given “preferential” aid packages, and that they wouldn’t tell you if you were given such or not, but if you were, you were guaranteed to keep your preferential status for all 4 years (so basically, if your situation stayed the same, so would your award). And yes, they “match” awards from a small number of peer institutions, and again promise that you’d keep comparable aid for all 4 years. So definitely, it’s not just a single objective formula.</p>
<p>There are many different ways that colleges handle outside scholarship already as well as how they issue financial aid. I can come up with a dozen proposals as to how to sweeten that pot. Is it really that important in the overall picture? </p>
<p>There was a situation some years ago where a student was unable to go to a college she wanted because the cost left to pay was just too much. When she got a nice scholarship, it seemed like the answer to her prayers. Well, this particular school takes any awards dollar for dollar away from the scholarship money it gives, so she was absolutely not one bit better off than she was without the award. The galling thing in that case is that the school did not meet EFC, did not use PROFILE, but that was what they allocated to her, and that was all she was getting. I wish I remembered the name of the school. So when EFC and the schools’ Expected Total Contribution differ, the issue does get murkey. Kids hoping to make up the difference that Institutional methodology and a school’s own ideas of what a family should pay, can really get hit that way. An example would be someone with a NCP who won’t pay, so the EFC is quite different from the colleges ETC, and where an outside scholarship would make it possible to go to a school. </p>
<p>So I see when there can be some bitter disappointments and there are any number of ways that can mitagate it. just letting the student keep it all would be great, but the shortage of scholarship money is real, If the return of some funds to the pots can help someone else’s need, I think the policies should stay as it is with an appeal process to review cases where it can really make a difference to a family.</p>
<p>I think outside scholarships should be able to be used to reduce gaps and towards at least some of the EFC. I don’t think that the total of all need-based aid, institutional, governmental, and other outside scholarships, should come to more than the cost of tuition, room, board, fees, and books. </p>
<p>I don’t think that people contributing to scholarship funds (as we do) want their money going towards a student’s being “flush with cash” as cpt put it. So I don’t really understand the Winston-Salem example in the article. Apparently the student thought she should get the full ride AND pocket a $17K Gates Scholarship at the same time? I wouldn’t contribute to a scholarship fund that had a policy like that. </p>
<p>Merit scholarships are different, because the donor doesn’t care about the level of need of the student.</p>