<p>“If certain schools just take away need-based aid depending on your scholarships, why even apply for scholarships? I mean, it makes the whole process somewhat counter-intuitive.”</p>
<p>Because you really don’t know what scholarships and what need based aid you will be getting until you get the actual packages. Also a lot of schools are sneaky about this and will do the integration in house so that you don’t see the results. You just get the entire package with merit and aid thrown in there and you don’t know how they carved it all up to make up your plate. Also some of these schools have merit within need and need within merit and other such hybrids so that until you have all of your choices on the table, you don’t know what your best bet is. </p>
<p>Even when you have it all laid out, you can lose if you pick the school with the biggest package and then come to find out you get an outside award after the commitments are all made and that school promptly applies against the grant they gave you so you don’t get a dime more when the the #2 contender would have applied it to works study and loans. But at the time you made the decision, you didn’t know if you’d get that extra outside award. </p>
<p>So even if you have all of the policies straight and you know them, you may have to take chance and lose out. </p>
<p>I see this with kids who are applying to need aware schools. Yes, you could get zinged for needing money there and not get accepted because of your need, but some of those schools, if they do accept you, will give you great aid packages. Some schools that do not guarantee to meet full need, may have merit awards and may want to give YOU a great package, whereas that school that guarantees to meet full need for you, might have a stingy definition of need and a stringent offset policy as well as lots of loans and other self help. I’ve seen so many different combos of aid that it makes my head spin.</p>