<p>Gladmom, that does make sense since Stanford is all residential as opposed to the UC’s where housing is not necessarily included. So at Stanford, they could easily apply the scholarship to living expenses directly. I was lazy in writing “your/parent” share because I made the false assumption that for many people, there is a blurred line between the two categories. Families with big bucks may pay the student share for them and families that are struggling may need more contribution from the student. You are of course right that it formally applies to the student share. However, it also true that some people who are very aggressive in pursuing private scholarships do end up getting more money than the actual cost that the college charges directly within one year. My cousin, (darn him) got an actual check from his college for the excess, albeit the college was not Stanford. Some scholarship entry forms even state that the proceeds can be “banked” at the college and applied to future terms at the same school, in which case they would no doubt be taken into account when calculating that next term’s aid package, but should still offset student share, not grant money. Those scholarships tend to be the ones that are sponsored by private industry companies and are usually open to high school applicants in all grades. My cousin started obsessively applying to every scholarship contest he could find starting in 9th grade and by the time he applied to college, he had quite a patchwork of awards lined up but still got a reasonably good need based offer from the colleges he applied to, but with no loans or student share and yes, they were all reported. Maybe that was because his parents’ share would have been incredibly low to begin with based on income.</p>