Question about Financial Aid - Current Students, please help!

pwoods
Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:02:46 +0000

^^ Correct. The federal work study and summer employment money will go directly into your pocket, so you’re supposed to use that to cover personal expenses and books. Everything else (tuition, room/board, random fees) will be covered by the university. So you’ll never need to pay them anything, but they won’t pay you (except for work study).

This may seem misleading, but it really isn’t. If they didn’t take into account the cost of books and personal expenses, then they’d say: “Tuition is $60,000; you’ll contribute $2,000 from work study, so we’ll only give you $58,000” and then you’d have no money for books or personal expenses.