I wanted to know if anyone else has been in this position and what they did.
My tuition for Boston College after BC aid is 10k but I have received 17k in scholarships. I expected my aid to be lowered which it was but I still owe BC money for tuition. So essentially no matter how much scholarships I get I will always have a balance on my account as my aid will be lowered to fit in the aid. They offered me loans but to me if I have received enough scholarships to not take out loans why would I. The point of scholarships is to help reduce loans and financial burden. I am not expecting a refund, I simply don’t understand why I owe money. I spent endless nights and rejections on scholarships so this is a bit of a slap in the face.
Has anyone been in this same position and if so what did you do?
Does your BC award show that they have applied your outside schollys? Did you upload copies of the private award letters to your Eagle account? (perhaps they haven’t update their system yet?)
Did you read teh faqs? It says outside scholarships can replace work study and student loans. Did they follow this policy in your case?
BC is rather welcoming, and now is a good time for you to call, with your parents if you/they are comfortable, and ask BC FinAid how the numbers work with your outside scholarships. Congrats on those, btw; that’s a ton of work.
Tagging @kelsmom and @thumper1 as I don’t personally have experience with financial aid, but my understanding is that schools typically reduce any institutional need based aid by the amount of any external scholarships.
every school is different. Only about 30+ Unis meet full need and are need blind. BC is one of those. With the exception of a dozen merit scholarships, BC is essentially need-based only.
They spell out rather clearly how stacking private scholarships work. (first eliminate $2400 work study…) What we don’t know from OP was how much was the Expected Contribution and in what composition (Pell Grant, federal student loan, work-study..) before applying the outside scholarships and after.
BC’s COA is ~$97k if living on campus. $5k less if living off campus, and $17k less if commuting from home.
Some colleges will reduce your institutional need based aid if you receive outside scholarships. Those outside scholarships reduce your need so your aid is reduced. If this is their policy, they will start with self help (loans and work study first) and if your outside awards are more, then your grants can be reduced as well.
Some colleges allow stacking of outside scholarships with their institutional need based awards up to the cost of attendance.
And some colleges do expect that your family will still pay the calculated family contribution.
I agree…call BC and ask them what their policy is and how your outside scholarships will affect your BC need based financial aid. They will be happy to help you!
Thank you! I did call them and email my financial aid officer. She said that their policy is reducing aid to keep within institutional need.
I told them and cited from the website that loans and work study would be replaced first but they still offered me loans to help me with my balance which didn’t make sense to me.
They are offering you loans to cover your family contribution…which they expect you to pay. You can take these federally funded Direct Loans to do this as long as all of your aid doesn’t exceed the cost of attendance.
I did upload my award letters and all and it’s on my account! Yet I still have a balance and I emailed them and they said I have reached my maximum of aid and no matter how much my scholarships is, I will still have a balance on my account.
It sounds to me like “institutional need” is the issue. It seems they have awarded aid that meets what they define as institutional need. The gap between cost of attendance and institutional need is what you need to pay. BC expects your family to pay a certain amount (cost of attendance minus institutional need). If you get scholarships, they’ll reduce loans and work study first … but they will also reduce their own grants if necessary in order to keep your total aid at institutional need.
If they offered you loans, then your institutional need was met without loans, meaning that loans in your financial aid package were replaced by the scholarship … and because they were, you have the ability to borrow those loans to pay your balance.
I understand that this is confusing. I’m glad you called to check, but it does sound like things were done correctly.
I suspect that the wording of your title, “Scholarship Policy” might be adding to your confusion. At most colleges, there are two different types of aid: 1) merit aid, aka scholarships, and 2) financial aid, aka need-based aid. At some of the schools with the lowest admit rates, they may offer very little or no merit aid and only offer need-based aid.
So, for instance, if a school costs $80,000 but they give a $50,000 scholarship (aka, merit aid) then the family’s portion is $30,000, and any outside scholarships earned are likely to reduce that $30,000 by the amount of the outside scholarship. The scholarship is generally given to attract students who otherwise might choose to go elsewhere.
In contrast, if a school costs $80,000 and they determine that your family can only pay $30k (and they indicate that they meet full need), they might give you a financial aid package of $50k with the expectation that your family pays $30k. If you get outside scholarships, most colleges will reduce the financial aid (i.e. need-based) package, so the outside scholarships (beyond loans and work-study) are decreasing the financial burden on the college, not on the student. So in the above example, if you earned $60k in outside scholarships for an $80k school that determined your family could contribute $30k, you would then receive no money from the school and your family would pay $20k (i.e. $80k-$60k).
Sometimes one will read a news story where it is reported that a student got a full ride scholarship to Harvard or Stanford or similar. What the reporter is actually disclosing is that the family had so much need that the university covered the entire cost of the student’s education. Schools like these (and at BC) have so many incredible students that any/all of their students could be deemed as “worthy” of a scholarship. These institutions have thus decided to offer little/no merit aid and instead focus on need-based aid to make the school more affordable for the students they invite to attend. But as a consequence, outside scholarships generally end up benefiting the university more than the students.
Is BC affordable at this point ? Or did you apply to all these scholarships to decrease final costs that were too high for your family and thus their replacing the aid they offered with the scholarships you won makes BC just as unaffordable as before (minus the 5.5k federal loans)?
I applied to these scholarships because it was not affordable before and even after these scholarships with BC’s policy, it is still not affordable and so I will probably having to end up taking out loans
Email financial aid and let them know that you undertook the work needed to get these scholarships because BC is not affordable without them.
You shouldn’t go over 5.5k in loans.
If the total gap between budget and direct costs that you and your family would be left to pay is higher than 5.5k, then you need to tell BC you regrettably can no longer attend because without the scholarships COA is unaffordable and will alas be using your scholarships at another college (typically these scholarships are portable).
You’d have to contact your second best choice that admitted you and is affordable, to see if they still have space for you with the same financial aid offer. There’s been a lot of turmoil in the past month so they very well could.