Commonly, a financial aid package will list some or all the following components adding up to cost of attendance:
- Student loan (SL)
- Student work (SW)
- Unmet need (UN)
- Parent contribution (PC)
- Government grants (GG)
- Institutional grants (from the school) (IG)
It is common, but not universal, that outside scholarships will be applied in order of SL, SW, UN, IG, PC. At colleges where this is the case, the effective value of outside scholarships is limited to SL + SW + UN, unless the outside scholarship is so large as to exceed SL + SW + UN + IG, in which case it would reduce PC.
However, colleges vary on their policies, so you may need to ask each college directly if it is not listed on the web site.